In today’s world, healthcare is a crucial topic in the mainstream media all over the country. Due to the fact that it affects each and every individual globally, most governments have implemented policies and laws that ensure that citizens receive the right medical attention. In the United States for example, the government has made healthcare affordable to people particularly those who are less privileged. Such an action has resulted to a huge influx of patients seeking healthcare services, thereby increasing the quantity of paper work linked to health practices (Tan, 2001). Consequently, providers have implemented EMS (Electronic Medical Records) to make sure that the patients’ records are accessible and accurate for several providers. EMR systems are technological systems which provide detailed information about a person’s life long health state, as well as, healthcare behavior on the foundation electric management. In this light, this paper evaluates a real world IT problem scenario that relates to healthcare and argues that electronic medical records are a cure for healthcare. Basing the argument on a number of case questions, the paper will show the validity of its assertion by showing that though there a number of challenges and difficulties in its implementation, the overall good of implementing EMR surpass the drawbacks.

1. Identify and describe the problem in this case?

One of the major problems in this particular case relates to keeping of medical record. Apparently, around 12 per cent of the healthcare spending is used in medical record keeping. The medical record have for a long time been kept in folders and files, that makes it difficult to access and share information. As a consequence, it has become extremely hard for the doctors and other health care providers to track the medical history of patients (comprising of the past visit information, previous medications, drug allergies and lab results) through the conventional paper based system (Oz, 2009). In fact, it has become increasingly common for patients to have repeated lab tests done to them due to misplaced or improper lab records.

2. What people organization and technology factors are responsible for the difficulties in building electronic medical record systems? Explain your answer.

In essence, building an EMR system does not come easy. There are a number of difficulties that comprises of organizational, technological and people factors. To begin with, the people factor involves the doctors, insurance companies, government agencies, as well as, patients. For the physicians, the difficulty emanates from the extended time required for training for them to use an electronic medical record system successfully. Physicians are pressed for time due to their tight and emergency schedules. Hence, learning to use an electronic medical record system successfully could take about 20 hours of rigorous training (Carter, 2001). Besides, since maintaining and implementing electronic medical record is quite costly, doctors are always apprehensive that their practices would face some substantial financial risk, in addition, to the possibility of the practices taking years before seeing the returns on investment. The financial benefits according to Miller and Sim (2004) greatly vary, from none in those practices that makes few changes in their record system to more than 20,000 dollars per doctor in a year in the practices that completely eliminate paper based processes. And, whilst a number of people (including the vendors) claim that EMR’s benefits outweigh the overall costs, doctors remain skeptical. Lastly, the people factor poses another difficulty since most patients are normally worried about the privacy and confidentiality of their online medical records (Carter, 2001). As such, the apprehension with these people factor makes it difficult to build the electronic medical system.

On the other hand, government agencies play quite a crucial role in ensuring the success of EMR system. The short-term objective is for all medical institutions to have electronic medical record system in place come year 2015. Yet, the problem emanates from the long-term objective of having a completely functional EMR system in the entire nation. Apparently, there are diverse systems that may be integrated into the medical facility, though not all of them can be comparable to one another. As such, this causes problems once it comes to the national accessibility.

3. What are the benefits of EMRs?

Supporters of electronic medical record believe that the system is the cure for healthcare due to the reality that it improves the patient health care through:

1. Preventing any medical errors.

Owing to the fact that electronic medical records are computerized, they might aid in decreasing the medical errors emanating from handwriting which might be hard to read at times. Moreover, electronic medical record notifies the members of a healthcare team once a proscribed drug might interact harmfully with other medications that a patient is taking and when the patient has some drug allergy (Gasch & Gasch, 2010).

1. Decreasing the health care costs.

Electronic medical record might save health care providers and patients money in a number of ways, comprising of prevention of duplicate expensive laboratory test and imaging, in addition to, eliminating some costly paperwork (Gasch & Gasch, 2010). Although, the cost of setting up EMR might be high, over some time, the cost is considerably less in comparison to the conventional system. Besides, electronic data storage greatly eliminates the costs of paper storage.

1. Decreasing treatment delays and office wait time.

Electronic medical records make it feasible for the health care team members to find and search for information quickly, such as laboratory test results. The available data is normally at the finger tips with an emergency medical report system hence the caregivers do not have to wait for the data for a complete treatment and diagnosis. Furthermore, since an email is the key mode of communication, exchange of data is very effective and fast. On the other hand, electronic medical systems might enhance office efficiency through elimination of patient needs to fill out the health forms every time they visit a healthcare institution. Electronic medical record should also decrease the necessity to search through a number of paper files just to find the necessary information about a patient.

1. Enhancing communication between patients and health care team.

Once members of a health care team have complete and instant access to the information about a patient, a patient receives more well timed response to his/her inquiries. Electronic medical record system might also decrease the time taken by the patient to wait for a call to be returned and a prescription to get filled. Electronic medical records also offer detailed post visit summaries, as well as, patient instruction.

1. Ensuring care continuity.

Electronic medical record system also aids in ensuring that patients with complex ailments, such as cancer obtain the needed care. For instance, a health care team may closely track the treatment schedules in an EMR system, which would go a long way in helping the physician avoid, detect promptly or manage long term treatment side-effects efficiently if they have all information they require about the diagnosis and treatment of a patient (Gasch & Gasch, 2010).

4. What is the business and social impact of not digitizing medical records (to individual physicians, hospitals, insurers, patients)?

Not digitizing the medical records comes with a number of business and social impacts to the individual doctors, insurers, patients and hospitals. To begin with, a paper based system needs more physical space for storing all record of patients who have ever visited a hospital. As such, the hospital must spend huge amount of money to maintain the hard copies. Such a system has negative impacts on the patients, insurers, hospitals and doctors due to the reality that it works extremely poorly in case of emergencies. The physicians on one hand are not able to begin their diagnosis and treatment till their assistant locates the medical record. In some cases the delay in treatment might even cost the life of patients.

In addition, slow exchange of data is yet another impact of not digitizing medical records. For a non-digitized system, data is normally exchanged through fax, mail or calls. For each and every lab test, as well as, prescribed medicine, the physician must pass information to the administrative assistant who informs a laboratory or a pharmacy in turn. The assistant then notifies the respective patient. Once the test results or prescriptions are ready, the laboratory or pharmacy informs an assistant who notifies a patient in turn, which proves to be an error prone and slow process.

Furthermore, a paper based system of record keeping in a hospital results to scattered patient data. In this type of system, the records and data of patients are marinated at various locations in form of charts. The health care administrators only update the patient record copy once a patient visits. In the same way, all the pharmacies and laboratories that patients visit have their very own paper record sets. In such a scenario, once the doctor is changed, the new one ought to hunt for data regarding past treatment and conditions (Tubaishat, 2011). And, as records are scattered in various location, crucial information such as recent surgeries, allergies and other vital information are not accessible easily by the insurance firms.

Paper based system makes patient data less accessible by various departments in a health institution. In such a system, accessing patient data is quite hard particularly when more than one department is involved (Tan, Payton & Tan, 2010). For instance, if a file of a patient is with the medicine department, the orthopedic department then has to wait till the general medicine department releases thereby wasting some valuable time.

Not digitizing medical records also creates difficulty in data retrieval and storage. It is quite hard to maintain a sole file containing all the different forms of records such as CT scan reports, X-rays, prescriptions and blood work. With the paper based arrangement, the entire procedure of data retrieval and storage becomes quite intensive for hospital staff. The assistance must go through the whole file to obtain particular record and re-file them at an appropriate place in that fie. For instance, let’s consider a person (patient) who has been attending a particular hospital for 10 years. Such a hospital will hence have all the detail about such a patient from the last 10 years in a particular file. If a doctor want to do a comparison of blood work for the patient in the course of 5 years, imagine how much time an assistant would spend trying to retrieve all the information, in addition, to the time a physician would require in order to analyze it. Furthermore, after the review of such records, the assistant and the physician ought to re-file each and every file properly. This takes away the quality time that the two health care providers would otherwise have been using to provide healthcare services to other patients. In comparison to a system of EMR, this system is not a cure for health care.

5. What stages of system building will be the most difficult when creating electronic medical record systems? Explain your answer.

As in any other technological system, there are certain stages of system building that would prove to be the most difficult when creating an electronic record systems. They comprises of funding, acceptance and training stages. The financial difficulty comprises of those monetary issues that are involved in the implementation of an electronic medical record. Most small practices find it hard to raise the money and time commitment required for upgrading. The funding aspect is a crucial factor for a large number of doctors and health care providers. The question that commonly faces such individuals are whether the overall cost of EMR creation are affordable, as well as, whether they would provide substantial gains. The overall cost may be divided to 2 ongoing costs and start-up costs.

The acceptance stage on the other hand comes from the uncertainty over ROI (return on investment). Since maintaining and implementing electronic medical record is quite costly, doctors are always apprehensive that their practices would face some substantial financial risk, in addition, to the possibility of the practices taking years before seeing the returns on investment. As such, acceptance becomes quite a huge impediment to creation of an electronic medical record system.

Lastly, EMR are hi-tech system which includes complex software and hardware. As such, a particular level of skill by both the users and suppliers is needed. Physicians often find it hard to juggle between their tight schedule and finding time to learn to use the system (Beaman, 2011). Consequently, availability of time to train also proves to be a bottleneck as far as creation and implementation of an EMR system is concerned.

Evaluation and conclusion:

With the growing population, as well as, an increment in number of in and out-patients, the pressure on health care providers has drastically increased in the past ten years. In effect, it has become quite hard for doctors to track the medical history of patients comprising of lab results, past visit information, drug allergies and previous medication using the conventional paper based system (Tan, Payton & Tan, 2010). Yet, patient records have for centuries been stored in paper form and, over that time, they have just consumed increasing space, in addition to, notably delaying access to effective medical care.

In effect, the solution that would provide cure for health care is an electronic medical record system that would be in a position of allowing physicians to store and find information immediately. In essence, they are means of creating organized and legible recording, as well as, access to clinical information about a patient. EMRs in contrast store some individual patient medical information electronically which facilitates immediate availability of this data to all stakeholders in a healthcare chain. This goes a long way in provision of a consistent and coherent care.

Moreover, over the past few years, this technology has transformed the physician-patient relationship. It has also helped hospitals and physicians function in a safer, smooth and more secure way, permitting the health care providers to update and retrieve information of a patient with just a button click. In effect, the physicians and administrators can concentrates more on problems affecting the patients instead of the record and other retrieval task associated with the traditional system. Moreover, an electronic medical record system promotes evolution of health-care transaction from the ineffective, paper based system to a reliable and a more real time paper-less system. It eliminates the transcription cost, manual note taking, and prescription writing and dictation time. This allows doctors to be more efficient, and aids them in providing better services to even more patients. Hence, despite the fact that it’s marred with some difficulties during the initial stages such as acceptance and uncertainties, time required for training and funding, the long term benefits of implementing an EMR system outweighs the drawbacks. In this light, EMR system has proved to be a cure for health care.

References:

Tan, J. K. H. (2001). Health management information systems: Methods and practical applications. Gaithersburg, Md: Aspen Publishers.

Miller, R. & Sim, I. (2004). Physicians’ use of electronic medical record: barriers and solutions. Health Aff vol. 23 no. 2 116-126

Oz, E. (2009). Management information systems. Boston, Mass: Thomson/Course Technology.

Carter, J. H. (2001). Electronic medical records: A guide for clinicians and administrators. Philadelphia: American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine.

Gasch, A., & Gasch, B. (2010). Successfully choosing your EMR: 15 crucial decisions. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.

Tubaishat, A. (2011). Recording and utilising patient-based data in clinical settings: The pressure ulcer case. De Montfort University.

Beaman, N. (2011). Pearson’s comprehensive medical assisting: Administrative and clinical competencies. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson.

Tan, J. K. H., Payton, F. C., & Tan, J. K. H. (2010). Adaptive health management information systems: Concepts, cases, and practical applications. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

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