Systems in Healthcare

Solution Preview

Caution: Large parts of the material have been taken directly from the websites mentioned below.
You have been asked by your supervisor to speak at the next manager meeting about the following topic:

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the electronic medical record for Patients and for Providers?

Objective:
Assess the role of information systems management in medical management operations and reporting.
Discuss the opportunities provided by technology for businesses.
Apply critical thinking skills to analyze business situations.
Use effective communication techniques.

Advantages for patients:
Patient data confidentiality
Record access can be restricted and monitored automatically; each user can have specific levels of access to various data types. Audit logs can be screened electronically to look for statistical abnormalities which may signal unauthorized record accesses.
Safer data
New users often fret over the potential for lost data due to system malfunctions. With a well designed and tested backup scheme and disaster recovery system, a computer-based record is much more reliable and less prone to data loss than conventional paper-based records.
Allows the patients the freedom to choose the healthcare they want.
It allows the freedom of patients to choose where they go for care, since clinical data may only be easily accessible in a single institution, office, or network, as well as their right to equity in access to appropriate care in a timely manner.

Advantages for service providers:
1. Simultaneous, remote access to patient data
Multiple clinicians can access a patient's record simultaneously from many locations. With the recent advent of secure data transmission over the web, clinicians can now review and edit patient records from anywhere in the world.
2. Legibility of record
Handwritten charts are notoriously difficult to read. On-screen or printed text is often far more legible than handwriting.
3. Flexible data layout
Users can have a separate data display and data entry screen, recall data in any order (e.g., chronologically or in reverse chronological order), and create disease or condition specific data review formats. Paper records suffer from temporal constraints in the sense that data are fixed in the exact sequence in which they were recorded.
4. Integration with other information resources
Once in electronic form a patient's data can be linked to reference information stored and maintained locally or, via the internet, on a computer half-way around the world.
5. Incorporation of electronic data
Physiologic data can be captured automatically from bedside monitors, laboratory analyzers, and imaging devices located throughout the healthcare enterprise. Such data capture is free from the uncertainties and unreliabilities of human data entry efforts.
6. Continuous data processing
Provided that data are structured and coded in an unambiguous fashion, programs can continuously check and filter the data for errors, summarize and interpret data, and issue alerts and/or reminders to clinicians following the detection of potentially life-threatening events.
7. Assisted search
In a small fraction of the time required using a manual system, computers can search ...