Discussion on EHR System

Question: Give a brief discussion on EHR system. Answer: The use of EHR system can help the hospitals to increase the efficiency and save the cost. However, it is important that the senior management and leaders should understand the pros and cons of all the systems before making any final decision. The type of EHR system would depend on the number of internal and external factors. It is important that the steering committee should take the inputs from the existing users of the system. The existing users would help the leaders to evaluate the product from the perspective of the users. The cost benefit analysis of the ROI (Return on Analysis) is definitely a big factor to choose the vendor from the selected pool of three vendors (Charles, 2013). However, the perspective or the inputs from users would also be a decision making factor. It is important that the question that would be asked to the user should be direct and to the point in nature. The users should be able to provide the information without any biasness. The one question that sho uld be asked to users can be listed as: Does the EMR system function appropriately for your practice by making sure that all the necessary functionality and operations are covered by your practice and does the new software (EMR system) imposes any new limitations on your practice. The existing users of the system can have a divided opinion or a mix response to the question. There is always a possibility that some of the users would be happy or satisfied with the EMR system and some of the users may not be satisfied with the new system. Therefore, it is important that the steering committee should have criteria to judge the responses of the users. In this case, the criteria for the acceptable response would depend on three key parameters. The first parameter is the performance of the system (Tavenner, 2010). It is important that new system should have a better and improved efficiency than the existing system. The second parameter is the usability. It is important that the new system should have a better user interface or usability as compared to old or legacy system. The third parameter would be user satisfaction. It is important to measure the satisfaction level of users. The criteria that steering committee should consider for the multi specialty practice of EHR would also include the features and the support provided by the system. For example, the system should have a clinical decision support system and the real time reporting system. Another criteria could be the overall security of the system. The satisfaction level of users can be directly linked with the productivity and the motivation level of employees. It is also important the steering committee should also analyze the profile of users (DesRoches, 2013). The responses of the users should also be linked with the users profile. It is possible that the users in the senior management group can have a different perspective of the system as compared to users in the low-level employees. References Blumenthal, D., Tavenner, M. (2010). The meaningful use regulation for electronic health records.New England Journal of Medicine,363(6), 501-504 Chen, Y. Y., Lu, J. C., Jan, J. K. (2012). A secure EHR system based on hybrid clouds.Journal of medical systems,36(5), 3375-3384. DesRoches, C. M., Charles, D., Furukawa, M. F., Joshi, M. S., Kralovec, P., Mostashari, F., ... Jha, A. K. (2013). Adoption of electronic health records grows rapidly, but fewer than half of US hospitals had at least a basic system in 2012.Health Affairs, 10-1377.