Patient safety is at the forefront of our nursing care.
There is a trend that involves healthcare systems incorporating the electronic medical record (EMR) more than ever before. More and more documents are available via the EMR. In addition to assisting in the safety of the patient, there are incentives available for health systems to incorporate an EMR. In this assignment,
you will go to

https://www.healthit.gov/topic/health-it-and-health-information-exchange-basics/health-it-and-health-information-exchange (Links to an external site.)and select a case study from the left-hand side of the website to summarize and critique following the rubric.

ASSIGNMENT!!!
MAKE SURE!!!!! The paper including a cover page and reference page.

Please use at least FOUR scholarly references (other than the website you are getting your case study from) to back up your claims. Format this paper in paragraph form using proper grammar, punctuation, and APA formatting. There is no need for an abstract. Submit this via the dropbox.

ANSWER

Patient Safety and EHRs

Case Summary

The integration and adoption of EHRs in the healthcare setting are increasingly taking place in organizations being a technologically advanced and digitalized world. These EHR systems have been adopted in all hospital functions, including computerized data entry, laboratory reporting, and the development of medical interfaces (Aldosari, 2017). The case scenario under analysis is the “Improving Blood Pressure Control for Patients with Diabetes in 4 Community Health Centers” in Community Health Centers, Inc. CHC has adopted the HER systems in addition to Clinical Decision Support to optimize workflow, increase healthcare quality, improve the health and monitor the blood pressure among Type 2 diabetic patients (HealthIT.gov, 2013). CHC targets a measure of BP<140/90 (NQF 0061), equivalent to 73% in the first year of implementation. The results recorded included the attainment of the 73% target as patients with a BP measure of (BP < 140/90) increased by 10% (63%-73%), hence, confirmation of evidence-based effectiveness of EHR systems in patient safety and outcome (HealthIT.gov, 2013).

How the Case Study Improves Clinical Knowledge

The case study acts as an informative reference point, a source of research, education, and shows some practices necessary in maximizing patient safety and healthcare among patients with Type 2 diabetes (Tanner, Gans, White, Nath, & Pohl, 2015). For instance, CHC discovered many errors in recording patient’s BP reading, which would be addressed by implementing EHR systems to ensure BP readings, are correctly recorded and can be run by all healthcare providers. They created a seamless flow and information sharing while integrating all departments that the target patient visits, increasing collaboration among health practitioners with seamless flow and sharing of correct information (Guo, Chen, & Mehta, 2017). This is a challenge many hospitals face. Thus, through this case study, informative, conclusive, evidence-based mitigation strategies are outlined as reference points, research sources, and an educative platform.

Ways the Case Study Improves Patient Safety and Outcomes

The CHC case study improves patient safety and outcomes by providing knowledge for nursing practice on the increased registry, data collection, and documentation to avoid errors that may compromise patient safety such as diagnosing the wrong BP measure hence, prescribing wrong medications and treatment plans (Johnson, Haskell, & Barach, 2016). It enhances clinical practice through an evidence-based project, showing that EHR systems enable a culture where patient safety is enhanced, reducing medical and nursing-related errors, mistakes, or adverse events. Moreover, with EHR systems, errors and missed diagnoses can be detected, eliminating possible errors and improving patient safety. The case study shows that with EHR Systems, correct patient listing, registry, and information flow are enhanced, which elevates professionalism among health practitioners, thus, influencing personal and professional development and patient-doctors relationships as effective communication methods are developed. All these aspects act to improve the health and monitoring of blood pressure among Type 2 diabetic patients.

Steps to Facilitate and Enhance EMR

The automation and digitalization of processes in all healthcare sectors must be embraced with much caution, adequate training, and preparedness among health practitioners. Therefore, as a nurse, enhancing EMR would include ensuring sufficient training and lifelong learning among all medical and office staff to ensure EHR systems maximize patient safety and outcomes instead of being a source of increased medical related errors, which is a particular challenge and vulnerability when mishandled. The training would be conducted comprehensively in all steps of handling the systems and patient’s information ranging from technical and operational aspects to people and technological factors.

Barriers and Ethical Considerations

In implementing the EHR and CDS approaches in CHC, outlined critical lessons learned include ensuring data reliability to maximize accuracy and effectiveness. Moreover, the use of alerts was stated as ‘judiciously’ as many or few would alter the systems’ effectiveness, causing user frustrations. One ethical consideration considered was that the systems created a platform to enable medical practitioners and office staff to act accordingly, do the right thing, optimize value, patient safety, and healthcare quality.

References

Aldosari, B. (2017). Patients’ safety in the era of EMR/EHR automation. Informatics in Medicine Unlocked, Vol 9, pp; 230-233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imu.2017.10.001.

Guo, U., Chen, L., & Mehta, P. H. (2017). Electronic health record innovations: Helping physicians – One less click at a time. Health Information Management Journal, Vol 46(3), pp: 140-144. https://doi.org/10.1177/1833358316689481.

HealthIT.gov. (2013). Improving Blood Pressure Control for Patients with Diabetes in 4 Community Health Centers. Retrieved from HealthIT.gov: https://www.healthit.gov/case-study/improving-blood-pressure-control-patients-diabetes-4-community-health-centers

Johnson, J. K., Haskell, H. W., & Barach, P. R. (2016). Case Studies in Patient Safety: Foundations for Core Competencies. Burlington: Jones & Bartlett.

Tanner, C., Gans, D., White, J., Nath, R., & Pohl, J. (2015). Electronic Health Records and Patient Safety: Co-occurrence of Early EHR Implementation with Patient Safety Practices in Primary Care Settings. Appl Clin Inform, 6(1): 136–147. doi: 10.4338/ACI-2014-11-RA-0099.