Implementation of Electronic Medical Records in Stanford Hospitals and Clinics - Case Study Example

Download file to see previous pages One of the main characteristics of EMR is its cohesive bond with information and technology (IT). The reason for employing IT is to make sure that all the organizational information stored in the hospital’s mainframe can commune to particular departments, which need particular information. Of course, this approach takes technical expertise of people associated with IT and additional expenses, but on the bright side, it decreases all the other costs i.e. cost of paper-based information system. Thus, decreases the errors and mishaps by a considerable margin and saves a lot of time that can be utilized in other areas of the hospital to increase productivity.
EMR is most beneficial when it comes to time-saving. In times of recession, where many hospitals are closing down or going bankrupt, EMR comes as a lifesaver in maintaining and obtaining patient records. It is particularly helpful in times of quarantine and medical panics were manually trying to get patient’s information could be a tedious task, that might take a lot of time, but with EMR this problem has been solved comprehensively. All the doctors, surgeons, technicians or attending physician has to enter the general information of the patient i.e. Name, Birthday, Day of admittance in the hospital and the patient’s complete record will pop-up on the computer screen. The following chart is taken from MSDC, (Medical Systems Development Corporation), to illustrate the benefit of using EMR instead of manual medical record-keeping, (Benefits of EMR, 2008)
EMR is useful because the information can be transferred from one place to another easily and swiftly. Due to which it is a far better choice than the old-style paper information management. (Wheeler, Wong, & Shanle, 2009)
It is also less expensive because of the low amount of IT staff required to handle EMR operations which in turn results in a decrease in the amount and energy spend on the manual tabulation of the information of the patient. Although the initial investment on the equipment procurement and training of staff are required, all this money can be recovered in a small-time provided that the EMR operations run smoothly and effectively (Varshney, 2009). ...Download file to see next pages Read More