Australian Electronic Health Record - Assignment Example

To implement EHR in any medical facility, different factors have to be taken into consideration (Laerum et al., 2003). Different concerns have to be resolved before the large-scale adoption of the electronic health records option in many medical fields in Australia. Some of the greatest challenges that have to be addressed include the funding of the change from paper to electronic or computerized methods of keeping records, the revision of existing workflow, making the electronic systems simpler for trained as well as untrained medical practitioners to use, incorporating medical files from numerous sources and ensuring that there is constant technical support (Dolan, 2013).
Other clinical systems have to meet a range of technical specifications to be linked with the PCEHR (Zaroukian, 2012). The National Authentication System for Health (NASH), as well as secure messaging systems, are some of the specifications. The clinical systems in Australia also have to meet the standards of the SNOMED-AU terminology. PCEHR data is preserved in a federated structure of online repositories that contain shared health summaries, discharge letters, consumer health notes, and event summaries (Australian Government Department of Health, 2013). Implementing an EMR system in Australia, requires strong physician leadership, good planning, and supportive staff. Its benefits include the generation of legible notes, accurate medication lists, instantly available charts, lower transcription costs, and decreased chart pulls. In Australia, most of the healthcare system processes of patient care do not run smoothly. After admission, there may be transfers as well as the discharge of different medical treatments on different patients (Zaroukian, 2012. An EHR system that seeks to integrate all these processes needs to meet the objective of better operational efficiencies. To ensure process improvement, a medical facility can implement tailored programs of process improvement before implementing EHR. Some programs that could be used include Lean and Six Sigma. A Lean Six Sigma panel can streamline processes by eradicating non-value added functions, curtailing handoffs, and reducing the incidence of delays, for instance (Dolan, 2013).
Process improvement in an EHR system is something that needs to be considered because it is a resourceful method of collecting and storing clinical data. An EHR process improvement procedure can facilitate team communication through retained documentation of medical treatments which allows medical practitioners to be able to easily gain access to the procedures documented by colleagues when necessary. eHealth integrates the technologies of authentication,  identification, and encryption to realize the safe exchange of healthcare data. The PCEHR regulations spell definite guidelines on which authorities are allowed to enter health information and which personnel have the right to change this data. Patients can gain access to their health records while also learning about which individuals have accessed their records.