Importance of EHRs
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.
Refer to the Stage 3 objectives for Meaningful Use located in file download 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.
Sample Answer
Importance of EHRs
- Tables showing pros and Cons of EHRs
| PROS | Rationale |
| It improves Healthcare | By using the EHR, It helps streamline the operations thus improve the overall healthcare. When we improve healthcare, we communicate more effectively and provide patients with more education. |
| It reduces the costs incurred during treatments | The system involves keeping information about the patients hence the doctors and the nurses would be able to monitor them effectively. By promoting preventive medications, they help reduce the chances of developing chronic illness that can be extremely expensive over time (Elharish, 2021) |
| It helps improve the decisions made in the hospitals | The records are gone through by various healthcare providers thus ensuring that there is collaboration in treatment of the patients. When we merge patient information from multiple sources we gain a better picture enabling us to provide the best plan of care for the patient. |
| CONS | Rationale |
| Easily can violate HIPAA | Because EHR provides rapid access to sensitive and protected health information, it increases the potential of compromising patients’ privacy. Some enquire on patients’ electronic records on purpose, while others do so by mistake due to faulty usage of security mechanisms. |
| Copying and Pasting | Because some practitioners utilize EHR as a shortcut into their progress notes, this may be the worst effect of EHR. While this saves time, it increases the risk of patient safety and hinders the kind of therapy patients need due to incorrectly recorded data or lost information between appointments. |
| Costly upgrades and maintenance of
software |
EHRs are computer systems hence need maintenance thus requiring corresponding systems upgrades. These upgrades require the training of providers and other people who use them thus could be white elephant projects as they could be left unused. |
- Refer to stage three objectives for meaningful
- Health information exchange– This refers to communicating health information to patients who are transferring to a higher level of care, such as post-acute or subacute rehabilitation, long-term care, independent or assisted living. The nurse practitioner should be able to provide the patient’s institutional receiver a summary of care. To do so, the APN’s responsibility include being comprehensive in her evaluation and documentation from the initial patient contact to follow-up visits and referral to the next level of care (Franklin, 2021). The information gathered by the nurse practitioner is focused not just on medication reconciliation, but also on screenings and evaluations that address risks, gaps, and health inequities in order for patients to have the greatest possible health outcomes. After the patient transfers to the next health setting, the NP integrates all of the providers’ inputs to the patients’ pertinent information in order to produce a better treatment plan and prevent medical mistakes. This puts the nurse practitioner under pressure to participate in transitional care programs in order to drastically lower hospital readmission rates.
- Electronic Prescribing- This refers to the computerized creation and transmission of prescriptions. This goal will have a beneficial influence on the function of nurse practitioners since it will boost the efficiency and accuracy of pharmaceutical prescriptions by minimizing medication mistakes caused by illegible handwritten prescriptions (Gryczynski, 2021). It also makes it easy for nurse practitioners to look up a patient’s history of prescription refills and fills. Nurse practitioners’ capacity to detect possible drug interactions and ensure that the correct prescriptions are provided is further improved by electronic prescribing.
