Journal of eHealth and eWelfare

Running head: INFORMATICS IN THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR
INFORMATICS IN THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR
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1INFORMATICS IN THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR
Electronic Health Records
Electronic Health Record was first validated in the Institute of Medicine’s report in
the year 1991 entitled “The Computer-Based Patient Record: An Essential Technology for
Health Care. It was thought to revolutionize the healthcare system improving the quality of
the same and enhancing safety. The EHR was developed for enhancing the quality, safety as
well as efficiency and was considered to be an effective tool for the physicians. The benefits
of EHR were seen to support the condition of the healthcare sector (Rigby & Ammenwerth,
2016). These were supposed to enhance the productivity as well as bring in improvements in
finance, quality of care improvement and in providing job satisfaction.
Lack of technical knowledge of EHR
Handling EHR requires proper technical knowledge of the staffs in the hospitals. The
staffs in hospitals are in their middle ages and they are not accustomed with the computer
system thus are inefficient in handling the same. The staffs those who are used to with the
paper and pen format are reluctant to adopt the technology. They are not interested in
learning a whole new technology for work purpose (Anand, Pal & Dubey, 2016). Staffs are
reluctant to accept changes within the work environment. This can be seen from the never
ending queue at the counters and this can be attributed wholly to the inefficiency of the staffs
to accept the change or learn the working of the system properly. Even after going through
training sessions they fail to adapt to the system and their inefficiency is clear from the long
queue outside the reception counters.
Effects of implementation of EHR
As per the nurses, the use of EHR decreased the quality of patient care. HIPAA
violation costs from $100 to $1.5 million when reported or detected. The Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act were initiated in the year 1996 and thus the national

2INFORMATICS IN THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR
standards for security as well as confidentiality could be set in U.S. Patient care has been
effected by ransomeware attacks in the year 2017, through various malware and other
security access problems on the servers of electronic health record, cost numerous of the
hospitals thousands of dollars per incident (Carney & Kong, 2017). The EHR needs to be
updated at a regular basis and the computer system must be checked for any malware or virus
that can affect the records in the system.
Viewpoint on Charting in EHR
The charting in EHR requires clicking on boxes and thus in this case the disadvantage
is reduced oversight. For instance it can happen that assessment documentation shortcuts may
be to default “normal findings” and the provider may have the provision to make alterations
based on an exam and in this case overlooking any one of the components will make it a false
document (Gray & Sockolow, 2016). In this way frequently repeated documentation can
place the provider at various risks. After the inception of EHR, the patients are of the opinion
that their interaction with the healthcare providers has decreased which gives them a
perception of de-personalization in their healthcare.
Data being tracked by organizations
The past medical history of the patients is another kind of data that is collected so that
their present condition can be analyzed well. The past medical history of the patients needs to
be collected as this will give an idea what they have been through which will help the
healthcare professionals to deal with the preset condition of the patient. This data has a lot of
importance in the medical sector. The data helps doctor to understand the past surgeries or
medication, patients have been through. The past history of a patient has a lot to do with the
present condition of a patient (Ashrafi et al., 2019). Clinical research comprises of collecting
these data and these data are often used to predict the medical conditions of other patients