Components of EHRs. Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay

Components of EHRs
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Components of EHRs
The rapid advancement of technology has significantly transformed various sectors, among them being the healthcare industry. Traditionally, health centers kept patient paper files, which were traced every time an individual visited a hospital. Today, many health institutions have implemented electronic health records (EHRs). EHR refers to software that healthcare providers use to record patients' data, which can be easily retrieved or shared by authorized users when the need arises. Indeed, it reduces medical errors and improves the clarity and accuracy of patient information.
The primary components of an EHR are patient management, laboratory, clinical, billing, and radiology information system (RIS). Specifically, patient management entails admission, registration, discharge, and transfer functionalities. The clinical component consists of nursing and electronic documentation. The laboratory module captures the results and integrates them with the billing module. RIS facilitates an effective communication system and picture archiving (Schopf, Nedrebo, Hufthammer, Daphu, & Laerum, 2019). Additionally, the billing system shows the charges associated with all the healthcare services that a particular patient has received in a hospital. Sick individuals are supposed to clear the charges or leave it to insurance companies if they have them. Consequently, EHR components facilitate the treatment process since they integrate all relevant data that physicians need to treat various patients.
An EHR refers to a digital recording system that offers comprehensive data about patients. The information found in this system includes medical histories, vital signs, patient demographics, progress notes, laboratory test results, allergies, diagnoses, vaccination dates, medications, radiology images, and billing and administrative data (HealthIT.gov, 2019). When a new patient is registered in the EHR system, he or she is given a unique identification code, the Medical Record Number (MRN). For this reason, anyone who wants to retrieve the medical history of any patient must have his or her MRN, which facilitates the confidentiality of recorded data. In other words, if the EHR system falls into the wrong hands, unauthorized personnel cannot trace or humiliate patients since they are represented by unique codes a...