Discussion
The statement of the problem was to understand how patient care can be improved through electronic medical record system. The development of the Electronic Medical Records System in healthcare was to improve medical care through a centered approach that allows easy collecting and maintaining of patient records in an electronic format (Kvedar, Coye & Everett, 2014). This leads to the ability to store patient details by encompassing historical data making it easy for retrieving and use in healthcare. Jensen et al. (2013) suggests that the reason why the system has been praised is its ability to capture different dimensions of patient data including historical patterns like allergies thus making it easy for the practitioner to make diagnosis of the best care process that satisfies the needs of the patient. The system enhances effectiveness of patient care through appropriate documentation and enhanced correspondence between different practitioner units and also family since information access and sharing is increased.
The Electronic Medical Record System is an extension of the EHR system to provide a more patient centered approach that has led to increased patient care through improved reasoning and decision outcomes that focus on the needs of the patient. The information collected by such systems can be used in medical decision making, research and significant practice level figures that determine the future of the profession (Denny et. al., 2013). Planning is improved since practitioners have all patient information that is captured in real time rather than using the manual form which can be prone to errors. However, this method offers limitations related to the cost of installing such systems since it takes time to develop the competencies required. Further, most facilities lack a manual back up of information which makes it risky when the institution is exposed to cybercrime related issues.
References
Denny, J. C., Bastarache, L., Ritchie, M. D., Carroll, R. J., Zink, R., Mosley, J. D., & Basford, M. A. (2013). Systematic comparison of phenome-wide association study of electronic medical record data and genome-wide association study data. Nature biotechnology, 31(12), 1102.
Jensen, R. E., Snyder, C. F., Abernethy, A. P., Basch, E., Potosky, A. L., Roberts, A. C., ... & Reeve, B. B. (2013). Review of electronic patient-reported outcomes systems used in cancer clinical care. Journal of oncology practice, 10(4), e215-e222.
Kvedar, J., Coye, M. J., & Everett, W. (2014). Connected health: a review of technologies and strategies to improve patient care with telemedicine and telehealth. Health Affairs, 33(2), 194-199.
