Benefits and Downsides of Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

Reply to the below Discussion post:
1. As discussed in the lesson and assigned reading for this week, EHRs provide both benefits and drawbacks. Create a “Pros” versus “Cons” table and include at least 3 items for each list. Next to each item, provide a brief rationale as to why you selected to include it on the respective list. PROS CONS 1.     High Quality of Care--patient will receive more treatment and diagnostics exams because the network system will share important health information about the patient and every interdisciplinary team and other specialties will have the access to study more about the case of the patient, there is a good coordination, health management and patient will be part of the treatment plan because they are allowed also to know what is happening to their health status through mobile application. They can see their laboratory result, medications, appointments and illness updates and prognosis (Sulmasy, Lopez & Horwitch, 2017). 2.     Enhance clinical research, efficient use of time and cost-effective-with the use of EHR, the researcher will obtain information faster compared to traditional paper-based study. The clinical trial will be easy because all data is right in front of the researcher and resources are available anytime. The evidence-based data will help clinicians to improve diagnosis, treatment, follow-up and this will lead to enhancement of patient’s care (Raman, et.al., 2018) 3.     Manage community health-        EHR will help community health care workers to provide data about public diseases and how to prevent and treat those disease especially covid19 era. With the stored community health information there is a coordination on patient’s care by providing them access to resources in the community, social services, referrals and this will ensure effective transfer of information (Reeves, et.al., 2022)     1.     At risk of patient safety-EHR allows 2 or 3 patients file to be open at the same time, this will lead to confusion and error, some physician are not into double checking the patients name and they directly put their order without double checking the name, and in unfortunate event wrong orders will be input on other patients who doesn’t need the medication or the data. This will cause a wrong treatment and wrong interpretation. (Walchter, Murray, & Adler-Misltein, 2019)  
2.     Impedes patient-nurse relationship-the healthcare provider focuses on the data to be entered in the HER rather than spend more time with patient, conduct a cephalocaudal assessment, listen to their stories and complaints and it interferes the traditional style of analysis. The nurses spend more time in technology to document than to patient’s interaction (Rathert, Porter, Mittler, & Fleig-Palmer, 2019). 
3.     Relying to technology and patient’s information-health care providers trust the information as correct and precise, they don’t check if the data is up-to date and if entered on the correct date and time and at the time of assessment. Health care professionals relied more on technology and have difficulty during down-time, some clinicians do not know what to do and make decision during system down (Rathert, Porter, Mittler, & Fleig-Palmer, 2019).   References: Raman, Curtis, L. H., Temple, R., Andersson, T., Ezekowitz, J., Ford, I., James, S., Marsolo, K., Mirhaji, P., Rocca, M., Rothman, R. L., Sethuraman, B., Stockbridge, N., Terry, S., Wasserman, S. M., Peterson, E. D., & Hernandez, A. F. (2018). Leveraging electronic health records for clinical research. The American Heart Journal, 202, 13–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ahj.2018.04.015Links to an external site. Rathert, Porter, T. H., Mittler, J. N., & Fleig-Palmer, M. (2019). Seven years after Meaningful Use: Physicians’ and nurses’ experiences with electronic health records. Health Care Management Review, 44(1), 30–40. https://doi.org/10.1097/HMR.0000000000000168Links to an external site. Reeves, Longhurst, C. A., San Miguel, S. J., Juarez, R., Behymer, J., Ramotar, K. M., Maysent, P., Scioscia, A. L., & Millen, M. (2022). Bringing student health and Well-Being onto a health system EHR: the benefits of integration in the COVID-19 era. Journal of American College Health, 70(7), 1968–1974. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2020.1843468Links to an external site. Sulmasy, López, A. M., & Horwitch, C. A. (2017). Ethical Implications of the Electronic Health Record: In the Service of the Patient. Journal of General Internal Medicine : JGIM, 32(8), 935–939. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-017-4030-1 Wachter, Murray, S. G., & Adler-Milstein, J. (2019). Restricting the Number of Open Patient Records in the Electronic Health Record: Is the Record Half Open or Half Closed? JAMA : the Journal of the American Medical Association, 321(18), 1771–1773. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2019.3835Links to an external site.    2. Refer to the Stage 3 objectives for Meaningful Use located in this week’s lesson under the heading Meaningful Use and the HITECH Act. Select two objectives to research further. In your own words, provide a brief discussion as to how the objective may impact your role as an APN in clinical practice.  To research more, I personally chose the objective about use of health information exchange to support care transitions and referrals and provide patients with electronic access to their health information and patient-specific education. This will help me to provide the best quality care to my patient and interact to them well. With proper assessment it will help me to analyze patient’s problem and decide who are the best interdisciplinary team who will help the patient to restore their normal self. Data obtained should be correct and accurate, thorough patients and family interview and patient’s physical assessment is my goal to be entered on patients file for other health care teams to access. Along with this is letting patient to check on their personal health information through an application specific to patient, this will let them login their medical record number or username and be able to read all their laboratory results, disease process, medications taken, and this also include educations pertaining to their specific disease. As a future NP, this is a very good tool on letting patient interact and know what is going on in their health, this will lessen their burden and it also cost effective because they don’t need to visit the hospital or clinic to obtain this information. I am also at ease that they know all of this because they will adhere to the treatment and will likely agree to different treatment modalities.