According to a 2011 report from the Institute of Medicine (IoM), entitled “Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care,” some studies indicate that electronic health records (EHRs) lead to “improvements in patient safety, while other studies find no effect.”
Well, this is what you need to know: EHR vendors absolutely contribute to patient safety.
People don’t realize the potential of EHR technology, especially in the long run. Everything is going toward being electronic, and we should view it with optimism because the end goal is patient safety and overall well-being. In addition, as EHR use increases, clinician productivity is bound to go up. Well-developed EHRs let the physician, NP, or PA concentrate on providing his or her very best patient care while the coders do the coding.
Potential Safety Risks
My friend Kenneth Edwards, a dermatologist, spends most of his time evaluating reports from EHR software users and developers regarding safety and risks.
“It is indisputable that EHRs play a key role in improving patient safety,” he says.
Keeping patients safe is a responsibility shared by everyone in the healthcare ecosystem. What differentiates an EHR vendor is its ability to continually innovate, update, and iterate. Any vendor that claims perfection is not being honest, and what makes a vendor rise above the rest is the level of transparency it offers to the industry and its customers.
In that vein, I’m going to be forthright with you: It’s true that a number of factors, such as software bugs, poor application design, and the tendency of clients to adopt unsupported workflows, can lead to safety risks. For example, the system may not detect it when a provider accidentally enters data in the wrong field, often as a result of a difficult-to-use interface.
Misentering patient information such as weight or height leads to incorrect calculations, and putting in the wrong name could mean reports are sent to a different patient. The risks to health and privacy in these situations should be obvious. Continue reading
Well, this is what you need to know: EHR vendors absolutely contribute to patient safety.
People don’t realize the potential of EHR technology, especially in the long run. Everything is going toward being electronic, and we should view it with optimism because the end goal is patient safety and overall well-being. In addition, as EHR use increases, clinician productivity is bound to go up. Well-developed EHRs let the physician, NP, or PA concentrate on providing his or her very best patient care while the coders do the coding.
Potential Safety Risks
My friend Kenneth Edwards, a dermatologist, spends most of his time evaluating reports from EHR software users and developers regarding safety and risks.
“It is indisputable that EHRs play a key role in improving patient safety,” he says.
Keeping patients safe is a responsibility shared by everyone in the healthcare ecosystem. What differentiates an EHR vendor is its ability to continually innovate, update, and iterate. Any vendor that claims perfection is not being honest, and what makes a vendor rise above the rest is the level of transparency it offers to the industry and its customers.
In that vein, I’m going to be forthright with you: It’s true that a number of factors, such as software bugs, poor application design, and the tendency of clients to adopt unsupported workflows, can lead to safety risks. For example, the system may not detect it when a provider accidentally enters data in the wrong field, often as a result of a difficult-to-use interface.
Misentering patient information such as weight or height leads to incorrect calculations, and putting in the wrong name could mean reports are sent to a different patient. The risks to health and privacy in these situations should be obvious. Continue reading