Literature on Electronic Health Record Implementation, Essay Example

Many state and federal initiatives have been launched in order to prevent against medication errors. In particular, Arizona recently signed a bill into law that states “Authorizes a controlled prescription drug monitoring program, including a computerized central tracking database”. This milestone has contributed to the history of quality improvement because since 2007, physicians would need to examine electronic patient records to determine the prescriptions that their patients might have received from additional sources (Grossman et al., 2014). This allows both physicians and pharmacists to have a greater understanding of potentially harmful drug interactions that may occur in patients that they are assisting.

This milestone has influenced the health care delivery system and nursing practice because it provides health care professionals to gain a greater understanding of their patients’ health. Not only does this system help protect against drug interactions, it helps the staff determine which medications have been tried in the past, in addition to which were successful for treating particular symptoms and which failed. Therefore, the nurse or physician can make a more educated diagnosis about the patient’s new condition, and prescribe medication that has a higher efficacy (Jones, 2013). This milestone has also altered the health care delivery system and nursing practice in terms of the education that is required to ensure that this law is upheld. Since this law requires the use of electronic health record systems, it makes it necessary for hospitals and other health care organizations to implement training programs to ensure that its staff can properly use these devices.

The nursing profession is committed to ensuring that quality care is offered equally for all patients. Therefore, this milestone relates to the purpose and philosophy of quality improvement because it is designed to enforce this requirement. Because the electronic health record system tracks the medications that patients take, the system could also be utilized to track patient progress over time. Therefore, it provides health care professionals with a tool that is useful in the process of determining how they can improve both the care and treatments provided in a manner that can help each individual patient. Furthermore, the data input onto the system can be utilized to evaluate relationships between symptoms and medications that are true for a large number of patients, so these new understandings can serve as evidence-based practice that will help effectively treat a larger quantity of similarly afflicted individuals (Silow-Carroll, 2012).

Health care quality is currently a national priority. Since there are many competing interests in the industrial biotechnology setting, it is important to remind both people and politicians that human health should be of greater concern than profit. Because these companies have a lot of influence over lawmakers, the products that are released by these organizations are not necessarily in the best interest of population health. Rather, they were created to make a profit. To ensure that the most effective treatments are produced, it is necessary to reverse this thinking and put health first. An example of the government’s failure to protect the health of all citizens due to the opinion of influential figures is the fact that the federal government does not require trusted vaccinations. These are necessary for population health through herd immunity, and allowing exemptions from these treatments means that the health of the whole population is at risk (Tabrizi, 2014).

References

Grossman JM, Gourevitch R, Cross D. (2014). Hospital Experiences Using Electronic Health Records to Support Medication Reconciliation. Retrieved from http://www.nihcr.org/Medication-Reconciliation

Jones E. (2013). Lessons from the Literature on Electronic HealthRecord Implementation. Retrieved from http://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/hit_lessons_learned_lit_review_final_08-01-  2013.pdf

Silow-Carroll. (2012). Using Electronic Health Records to Improve Quality and Efficiency: The  Experiences of Leading Hospitals. Retrieved from http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Issue%20Brief/2012/Jul/ 1608_SilowCarroll_using_EHRs_improve_quality.pdf

Tabrizi S. (2014). Assessment of herd immunity and cross-protection after a human papillomavirus vaccination programme in Australia: a repeat cross-sectional study. The Lancet, 14(10): 958-966.