Benefits of the Electronic Health Record for Improving Safety and Quality
What are Electronic Health Records??
- An electronic health record (EHR) are the digital equivalent of a patient’s paper-based records or charts at a clinician’s office. EMRs typically contain general information such as comprehensive medical history, diagnoses, medications, allergies, lab results and treatment plans for a patient as collected by the individual medical practice.
- EHRs are real-time, patient-centered records that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users.
What are the Benefits of the Electronic Health Record and how do they Improving Safety and Quality of Care???
Benefits of EHR systems provide a plethora of safety and quality of care advantages, such as:
■ Improve the quality of patient care - help healthcare providers track and monitor patient progress, provide easy, up-to-date access to patient information, demographics, and quickly access valuable information. Also allow healthcare providers to make better-informed decisions about patient care.
■ Increase patient/consumer participation in care - improves patient engagement by providing patients access to their health information, empowering them to take a more active role in their health and wellness.
■ Improve the accuracy of diagnoses and health outcomes - provides instant access to data pertaining to test and lab results, allows access to critical information such as allergies, code status, and emergency contacts.
■ Improve care coordination - streamline managing and sharing patient records, facilitates communication between providers allowing effective collaboration. Allows providers to check for medication conflicts or potential issues when prescribing new medications. allows for e-prescribing making obtaining medications easier.
■ Increase efficiencies and provide cost savings - reduces the risk of errors, duplicated test and procedures, also reduces the risk of transcription errors. Streamline appointment scheduling, billing and patient communication. Decreases time spent on administrative task and reduces the need for paper-based systems.
■ Provide predictive and prescriptive tools to provide awareness and alert changes in patient condition or health risks - allows access to databases, and population health management, provides clinical decision support tools, allows access to multidisciplinary teams, provides clinical alerts and reminders to providers.
Why the Nurse Practitioner needs to understand and use the EHR to improve safety and quality?
The use of electronic health records (EHRs) by nurse practitioners (NPs) has tremendously transformed patient care. By implementing use EHRs, NPs can manage health information in ways that are patient centered, they allow access comprehensive patient data quickly and efficiently, and enable better care coordination among providers improving the quality, safety and consistency of care while simultaneously reducing health-care costs, and satisfaction through health information technology. EHRs allow NPs to monitor patient progress, provides comprehensive data that can guide them to more accurate, reliable care and decrease their overall workload.
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
SUCCESS IS A SERIES OF SMALL WINS, STRIVE FOR PROGRESS - NOT PERFECTION 💖💖
