Implementation of Electronic Medical Records - Essay Example

? Implementation of Electronic medical records in the organization will lead to increased patient satisfaction due to improved health care quality. The EMR will reduce medical errors such as diagnosis errors and drug prescription errors by enabling the physicians to instantly access huge volumes of patient data and information. The change will also increase efficiency in the health care delivery processes. The effectiveness of the change will be determined by satisfaction levels of stakeholders, the quality of health care and efficiency of health care delivery. Some methods of measuring the effectiveness of the change include questionnaires, documentation reviews, costs-benefit analysis and documentation validation reviews. Introduction Electronic Medical records (EMR) enable health institutions to manage medical and clinical data more efficiently, thus, improving the patient care (Laing, 2002, p. 41). Some of the benefits of implementation of EMR in health organizations include the easy access and retrieval of patient information, reduction in medical errors and improvement of the patient care delivery processes (Hakes & Wittington, 2005, p. 235). Some of the determinants of effectiveness of the implementation of the EMR include the quality of patient care delivered, the reduction in the operating costs in the organization related to patient information storage and retrieval, and the level of patient satisfaction with the health care (Laing, 2002, p. 43). The commitment and user-friendliness of the EMR to important stakeholders like the clinical staff and patients will also be utilized to access the effectiveness of the implementation of the change (Laing, 2002, p. 44). Another metric that will be utilized to access the effectiveness of the change is the degree of patient privacy and confidentiality protection. EMR will assist the clinical staff to access huge volumes of patient information in real time such as the laboratory tests, prior drug prescription and medical diagnosis. The quality, cost and satisfaction outcomes of the EMR change will have to be measured in order to ascertain the effectiveness of the organizational change. Some methods of measuring the costs of EMR include the systems maintenance costs, procurement costs and clinical staff training costs. The quality of the change can be measured through observation of the reduction in medical errors will be patient satisfaction outcomes will be measures through patient surveys and increase in patient numbers in the health organization (Laing, 2002, p. 43). Effectiveness of EMR Organizational Change Electronic medical records implementation will lead to improvement in patient care. The change will also lead to improvement in the patient satisfaction and reduction in costs of managing patient information. EMR will enable the clinical staff the access large amount of patient information from a central database, thus, improving the workflow efficiency in the health organization. The effectiveness of the EMR implementation will also be determined by the improved reputation of the health organization in the community and increase in the patient numbers. The effectiveness of the change will be also be determined by the improvement in patient safety and reduction in medical errors such as wrong diagnosis or unnecessary drug prescription to the patients (Hakes & Wittington, 2004, p. 237). The effectiveness of the change will also be determined by the reduction in billing errors and cost savings in clinical processes. Another determinant of the change is the degree of change acceptability by the workers which will be determined by the morale of clinical staff and ability to use the EMR in their work activities. The improvement in communication among the various departments in the health organization such as the laboratory, pharmacy and cardiology department will also determine the effectiveness of EMR implementation. Another determinant of the effectiveness will include the coordination of the patient care process from appointment scheduling, diagnosis, and drug prescription. Another determinant will include the availability of the information technology infrastructure to support the EMR, the functionality of the EMR and content of patient information that can be captured and retrieved from the EMR. The level of patient privacy and confidentiality protection will also determine the effectiveness of the change. This will be done through assessing any possible privacy vulnerabilities and unauthorized access to the patient records. The change will also lead to shorten the lab tests and imaging time and ensure drug interactions and allergies are identified before drug administration. Possible Outcome Measurement Strategies Related to Organizational Change Processes There are numerous outcome measurement strategies that can be used to assess the impact of EMR implementation on the health organizational processes. One of the measurement strategies is the use of satisfaction or perception surveys. This outcome measurement strategy is useful in understanding the level of patient satisfaction with the improved workflow efficiency and enhanced patient health care (Hakes & Wittington, 2004, p. 239). Another outcome measurement strategy is through the use of stakeholder analysis. Stakeholder analysis is useful in understanding the level of clinical staff satisfaction with the change and use of the EMR. Another useful measurement strategy is direct observation of the patient movement in the health institution. The change agents can observe the time taken to serve customers or the patient waiting time in the queue and assess whether the EMR change has improved the health delivery process efficiency (Hakes & Wittington, 2004, p. 236). Generally, the outcome measurement strategies will deal with the benefits of the proposed organizational change. The measurement strategies will also involve quality inspections of the EMR, analysis of the medical error trends, calculation of the time taken to enter patient medical data in the EMR and average time taken to serve one patient. The measurement strategies will also focus on the behavior of clinical staff, their work productivity and morale and patient’s rate of attendance to clinical appointments. The quality of patient carte will also be measured through reviewing the trend in positive medical treatment outcomes and increase in patient volumes seeking health services in the particular health organization (Hakes & Wittington, 2004, p. 242). Measures of Quality, Cost and Satisfaction Outcomes of EMR Organizational Change There are numerous methods that will be utilized in measuring the quality, cost and satisfaction outcomes of the proposed organizational change. The quality of the EMR will be measured through analyzing the reduction in medical errors, the increase in patient information storage capability and protection of patient’s privacy. One of the methods of measuring the quality outcomes of the proposed organizational change is documentation review method. The management will review the patient information that has been entered in the EMR and make a comparison with the paper based records (Da've, 2004, p. 50). The patient information should be accurate, timely and relevant. It should contain the demographic data, disease history, symptoms, treatment history, prior medical treatment administered and address of the patient. Another method of determining the quality of the change is the time required to enter the patient data, security and privacy protocols of the EMR and ease of use by the clinical staff. The management should use time-analysis charts to measure the quality of the EMR in improving health processes efficiency and calculate the percentage of data fields entered accurately in the patient records (Da've, 2004, p. 50). The cost of the proposed change will be determined through cost-benefit analysis of the EMR implementation and expected outcomes. The cost analysis will include the amount of money required to procure the EMR and information communication system in the organization include computers hardware and software (Da've, 2004, p. 51). The costs also include the maintenance costs of the EMR since extra personnel will be employed to administer the EMR and provide routine technical maintenance. Due to technicalities of the EMR, there will be a need of staff training on the data entry procedures, patient information storage and retrieval procedures in the EMR. The staff will also be trained on how to generate summarized patient health care reports for analysis. The benefits of the EMR will include reduction in information storage costs since paper-based records will be eliminated. Another benefit will include reduction in medical liability of the physicians due to reduction of medical errors and civil suits. Another benefit will include the increase in patient volumes thus leading to more profitability of the health institution. The EMR is expected to lead in overall operating costs of the health organization and reduction in patient data recording costs (Miller & Sim, 2004, p. 120). Some of the methods that will be used to measure satisfaction outcomes include use of questionnaires and surveys. The surveys will be able to indicate the patient’s perception on the safety of their confidential information and attitudes of physicians and clinical staff towards the EMR implementation change. Another method that will determine the satisfaction level is semi-structured interviews with a sample of the patients, thus, enabling the management to understand the opinions of the patients and clinical staff, such as the negative and positive impacts of the EMR implementation (Miller & Sim, 2004, p. 125). Conclusion The effectiveness of EMR implementation in the organization will be determined by reviewing the increase in workflow efficiency, the level of staff motivation, the reduction in medical errors and improvement in patient medical data privacy. Some of the outcome measurement strategies include analyzing the patient waiting time, the medical error trend in the organization and patient satisfaction levels. The quality of proposed change will be measure through time-chart analysis, patient data documentation reviews, and analyzing the privacy security protocols. The cost outcome will be measured through cost-benefit analysis that includes the costs of procuring the EMR and computer hardware, the systems maintenance costs, and staff training costs. The cost savings or benefits will include reduction in medical error legal suits and fines, reduction in patient data storage costs associated with manual systems and increase in patient billing accuracy. The satisfaction outcome will be measured through perception surveys, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The clinical staff productivity and increase in morale will also indicate the satisfaction outcomes. References Da've, D. (2004). Benefits and barriers to EMR implementation. Caring, 23(11): pp. 50-51. Hakes, B. & Wittington, J. (2004).Assessing the impact of an electronic medical record on nurse documentation time. Computers informatics nursing, 26(4): pp. 234-242. Laing, K. (2002). The benefits and challenges of the computerized electronic medical record. Gastroenterology nursing, 25 (2): pp. 41-45. Miller, R.H. & Sim, I. (2004). Physicians' use of electronic medical records: barriers and solutions. Health Affairs, 23(2): pp. 116-126. Read More