Electronic Healthcare Records Policy
Electronic healthcare records (EHR) have been the focus of clinical practitioners to enhance recording and clinical decision-making support. American hospitals and physicians have adopted EHR to improve care and positive outcomes in service delivery. President George W. Bush promoted the policy to adopt EHR through the health Information and technology departments in 2007 (Kukafka et al., 2007). The electronic records policy provides a significant spectrum of capturing data, service delivery, and decision making for the clinical staff.
The EHR policy has enhanced efficiency in the internal hospital management system by eliminating the cumbersome process of paperwork. Given that clinical staff has specific tasks to discharge, EHR ensures that every task is recorded and attributed to the practitioner involved for follow up in case of errors or when clarifications are required. Internal systems have also improved after integrating billing, pharmacy, and clinical departments.
The adoption of EHR has enhanced efficiency in clinical care, patient/provider interactions, and workflow. The policy has reduced the cases of data loss, prescription errors, and limitations in decoding a patient’s medical history during diagnosis. The nursing department through EHR systems can access information, such as prescriptions, doses, disease severity, and other management expectations, which are specific to every patient.
EHR has enhanced the adoption of organizational policies. For instance, the policy on patient data storage has focused on security. The time allocation of all processes from triage to physician analysis is reduced. Additionally, the organization policy that requires effective health research and academic investigation for nurse practitioners and physicians has been implemented since research data is readily available through the virtual patients’ information. The policy automates client records and patient medical reports, which enhances the roles of nurses. Furthermore, the policy promotes and hastens nursing care processes by eliminating the cumbersome paper-based approaches.
