Assignment on EHR - Script

Running head: EHR - SCRIPT
EHR - Script
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author’s name

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“How is Calvary Healthcare dealing with the Electronic Health Records within the age
care sector?”
Introduction
Just like a book, article or a journal represents a type of knowledge regarding a specific topic;
similarly, a medical record is a set of documents that provide information and knowledge
regarding the health of a patient and provides the evidence of an encounter between healthcare
professional and patient. The concept of this medical record has come from ancient times
especially from Egypt, Greece and Rome. The form of medical record has come down taking
several forms, from stone tablets during the ancient time to paper documents till 20th Century.
Till the 20th Century, medical records have been a combination of auto-reported patient
information with the typically recorded physician diagnosis observations on paper-based media.
The use of the paper based documents as the medical records had a significant number of
disadvantages. Like, the paper medical records required physical space for storage purposes,
backup is not available for paper-based medical records. So if a fire catches or any other incident
occurs then it will wipe out all the documents and will destroy them. In the paper medical
records the procedure of storing information was manually writing information which is both
time consuming and with a higher degree of error. Thus, to counter these disadvantages, a new
computerized system was developed as known as the Electronic Health Record (EHR).
An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a computer version of the medical history of an
individual, which the physician retains over time and may include any important statistical
clinical data pertaining to the treatment of that patient in the sense of a single hospital, including
community, improvement reports, issues, prescriptions etc.

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The use of paper medical records was found to be difficult and very challenging during the new
era. Many of the disadvantages were paper-intrinsic. Such inconveniences can be broken down
into four sections: organisational, logistic, research and paper’s passive aspect of information.
Organizational applies to ways in which the information is stored in a file and also describes the
data recovery processes. Logistic means the actual use of the health information. This deals with
topics such as wear and tear, device retention and information exchange. Research describes the
way information can be used to conduct studies, and paper’s passive aspect of information refers
to the idea that paper cannot deliberately pick out flaws that might have resulted in data entry.
Thus, it was seen that the EHR system is better compared to the paper based medical record.
Calvary Healthcare
The Calvary Healthcare was started by Mary Potter and the sisters who belonged to the Little
Company of Mary. Currently, Calvary Healthcare control fourteen government and private
healthcare organizations, seventeen retirement and aged care services and a nation-wide service
of community care centres.
Calvary Healthcare is responsible for 14 residential care facilities in New South Wales (NSW),
Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and South Australia (SA). The organization is committed to
holistic, resident focused care.
The Australian Government subsidizes residential aged care in Australia and is regulated by the
Aged Care Act 1997. Residential elderly care offers a number of care options and housing for
older people who cannot live independently. The Calvary Healthcare is a residential aged care.

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The Calvary Healthcare was established in the year 1885 by Mary Potter and the sisters of the
Little Company of Mary, Calvary is a charitable, not-for-profit, Catholic health care
organisation. The mission of Calvary Healthcare is to provide quality, compassionate health care
to the most vulnerable, including those reaching the end of their life. The Calvary healthcare is
accountable for around 12,000 nursing staff and volunteers, 14 government and corporate
healthcare organizations, 17 rehab homes and age care facilities and a national network of
Community Care Canters.
EHR in residential care facilities
Long-term care (LTC) services such as old-age residential care are an integral part of the health
care sector, providing services to the wider population. The implementation of electronic health
records (EHRs) at LTC hospitals like in the Calvary healthcare, though, lags behind other aspects
of the health care sector.
Australian society ages over time, and aged care service needs have been increased. Age care
facility of the country is one of the most prominent sectors of the health care industry. It has been
stated that the aged care facility of Australia has been increased in size with time and there are
availability of prominent distinct organisations which focuses on giving the high quality care to
the people of old age. It has been seen that the industry also comprises of the health insurance
companies which helps in supporting the ailed people. The Australian health care system has
been seen to be composed of modern technologies like EHR equipment. Consequently, the
EHR's introduction is also common in residential aged care services.

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Perspectives of the stakeholders
The major stakeholders in the healthcare organization are the nursing staff members. Nurses
represent the main group of users of health information technology (HIT). As such,
modifications by nurses are crucial to the successful implementation of HIT. However,
Longitudinal strategies to recognizing the assumptions of nurses regarding HIT still remain
relatively unexplored (Zadvinskis, Smith and Yen 2018).
 Nurses viewed EHR devices negatively in semi-private patient rooms and short, noisy
halls due to vibration, intermittent (battery) power loss, and demanding use (Zadvinskis,
Smith and Yen 2018).
 There were also few difficulties with specific user-tasks which impacted the ability of the
information system to support the work of the nurse. Nurses complained that the EHR
failed to fulfill the clinical needs of the nurses such as describing the patient story (Topaz
et al. 2016).
 There were also few complaints that the system did not provide a proper structured
format such as check lists or free text documentation such as narrative descriptions which
would help in the clinical decision making process (Topaz et al. 2016).
Recommendations
There are several ethical issues and challenges which are faced by the nursing staff. Thus, it is
necessary for the healthcare industry and the EHR system manufacturers to implement the
following strategies or recommendations when developing and implementing an EHR system in
the healthcare organization –

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 It is important to develop strong guidelines like not sharing employee IDs or passwords and
implementing certain security steps like strong privacy and security policies be implemented
in the EHR system to secure the health information of a patient. This will help in maintain
privacy and confidentiality of the health information.
 Software or preventive measures such as firewalls and antiviruses should be incorporated in
the EHR software.
 It has also been observed that data inaccuracy occurs as a result of copy and paste method
used by the healthcare professionals. It is very unacceptable and thus an EHR upgrade should
be done where copy and pasting will be restricted and a strict data storing guideline should be
imposed regarding copy and pasting of patient information.
 Manufacturers should develop soundless EHR systems with better battery system having the
capability to run on inverter even if there is a power loss.
 There are rare events when the health care may have several emergency cases. This could
have a rundown on the health care system which might create tension and frustration among
nurses. This could also put an overload on the EHR systems that may hamper the flow of
nursing activities. According to the study conducted by Zadvinskis, Smith and Yen (2018), it
has been seen that team work is effective in such events. Nurses rely on coordination with the
care team for assistance. Collaboration had an effect on patient safety, as nurses valued the
ability to view all information while prescribing medication to patients of other nurses.
Teamwork has also been correlated with increased productivity of nurses. Because of good
cooperation, nurses focused more on each other than IT staff to address system issues.
 It is also important that the EHR system provide all the necessary health information which
will help in supporting the work of the nurse.

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Conclusion
Negative user interface and efficiency perspectives have been examined, although it is
ambiguous whether that was due to change management and the overall disturbance that a
significant execution of information technology (IT) can wield on the organization or was it
simply due to lack of knowledge regarding the use of EHR. Broadly speaking, the adoption of
EHRs in residential old age facilities was found to be more productive than not implementing it.
Adoption of EHRs in residential old age facilities culminated in enhanced clinical record
monitoring that made for better decision-making.

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References
American Academy of Family Physicians, 2016. Understanding features & Functions of an
EHR.
Baldwin, R., Chenoweth, L. and dela Rama, M., 2015. Residential aged care policy in Australia–
are we learning from evidence?. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 74(2), pp.128-141.
Fields, W., Gallo, A. and Cone, M., 2013. Transitioning from a best of breed clinical information
system to a one-vendor electronic health record with computerized provider order entry. J Health
Information Management, 27(2), pp.44-51.
Jeyaratnam, E. and Donegan, A. 2019. Nearly 2 out of 3 nursing homes are understaffed. These
10 charts explain why aged care is in crisis. The Conversation. Available at:
http://theconversation.com/nearly-2-out-of-3-nursing-homes-are-understaffed-these-10-charts-
explain-why-aged-care-is-in-crisis-114182 [Accessed 17 Jan. 2020].
Kruse, C.S., Mileski, M., Vijaykumar, A.G., Viswanathan, S.V., Suskandla, U. and
Chidambaram, Y., 2017. Impact of electronic health records on long-term care facilities:
Systematic review. JMIR medical informatics, 5(3), p.e35.
Ozair, F.F., Jamshed, N., Sharma, A. and Aggarwal, P., 2015. Ethical issues in electronic health
records: A general overview. Perspectives in clinical research, 6(2), p.73.
Pennic, F. 2012. 74% of Physicians Report EHR Adoption Enhanced Patient Care.
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adoption-enhanced-patient-care/#.XiSSd8gzbIU [Accessed 19 Jan. 2020].

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Pennic, F. 2014. EHR Adoption in Healthcare system. Hitconsultant.net. Available at:
https://hitconsultant.net/2014/03/21/15-statistics-about-ehr-adoption-in-office-based-physician-
practices/#.XiSQo8gzbIU [Accessed 19 Jan. 2020].
Schulte, F. and Fry, E. 2019. Death By 1,000 Clicks: Where Electronic Health Records Went
Wrong. Kaiser Health News. Available at: https://khn.org/news/death-by-a-thousand-clicks/
[Accessed 19 Jan. 2020].
Shahmoradi, L., Darrudi, A., Arji, G. and Nejad, A.F., 2017. Electronic health record
implementation: a SWOT analysis. Acta Medica Iranica, pp.642-649.
Topaz, M., Ronquillo, C., Peltonen, L.M., Pruinelli, L., Sarmiento, R.F., Badger, M.K., Ali, S.,
Lewis, A., Georgsson, M., Jeon, E. and Tayaben, J.L., 2016. Nurse informaticians report low
satisfaction and multi-level concerns with electronic health records: results from an international
survey. In AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings (Vol. 2016). American Medical Informatics
Association.
Zadvinskis, I.M., Smith, J.G. and Yen, P.Y., 2018. Nurses’ experience with health information
technology: Longitudinal qualitative study. JMIR medical informatics, 6(2), p.e38.