Challenges and Barriers to Implementing Health Information Technology for Medical Records

This study discusses the challenges and barriers faced by healthcare organizations and providers in implementing health information technology for medical records. The barriers include economic, technical, operational, and privacy issues, as well as lack of proper training and customizability. The study suggests that proper training and education for staff and clinicians is necessary to address these barriers.

Running head: COMMUNICATION
Communication
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Introduction
Health information technology can be described as a broad term which encompasses the
infrastructure and the technology used to share, analyse, record the patient health data. The
different technologies that are used in the healthcare information technology are the communities
that discuss and share information, personal health care tools which includes the smart devices
and the apps. The major purpose of the health IT is to provide care to the patients, achieve health
equity (Middleton et al., 2013). This study is based on the describing the challenges and the
barriers that the organizations and the healthcare providers must address in order to deploy the
medical records and the health record teams.
Barriers and the challenges towards implementing the information technology for medical
records
Economic barrier
Time : adoption of the information technology requires time. Use of the Informational
technology requires fresh training that many physicians might not want to invest.
Cost : Use and the Maintenance of the electronic information may accumulate costs that would
not only come from the purchase of the system and also from maintenance, training, system
upgrade, data storage (Christodoulakis et al., 2016).
Lack of customizability
Physicians often do not want to be constrained by the rigidity of the software system.
Health care financing organizations evolved based on the methods of communication that were
basically very traditional. The reimbursement policies are based on the complexity, duration and

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the volume of the face-to-face visits. The even after the years of the debate, the consultation that
is provided over the phone is not directly reimbursed. Except some of the exceptions, only a few
organizations are adopting the policies that directly pay for the online patient encounters. Thus, it
is important to note that not all organizations are interested in investing in the online physician-
patient encounters. There are other challenged that arises from the staffs and the clinicians that
have the concerns regarding the management of the online communication .The providers are
also concerned about the messages, emails and the web might increase their workload rather than
substituting for the other tasks, also the messages can be clinically irrelevant.
Lack of proper training
In most of the cases the health care staffs and the nurses lacked knowledge regarding the
handling of the data and hence require robust training. Lack of knowledge are likely to delay
procedures in comparison to the time taken by the hand written records.
Privacy and confidentiality
Use of the information technology may endanger the privacy of the patient. According to
Forbes reports in 2015 alone, there had been over 112 million data breaches of the health care
records in US alone (Christodoulakis et al., 2016). Unauthorised access to emails and health
records of the patient may bring adverse effects such as discrimination and stigmatisation.
Operational and technical issues
Technical and operational faults may delay the work further making it difficult to retrieve
the medical records (Jawhari et al., 2016). While considering from the perspective of building a
web-based patient portal that will integrate with the patent activities is actually a complex
endeavour. In many cases the vendors underestimate the complexity of the patient’s condition or

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assessment. Interacting to physicians, online may hinder the interviewing and information
recording as doctor- patient interaction is based on the establishment of the interpersonal
relationship that cannot be done online.
Reliability of the system
Doctors require reliable access to the patient record at all times. They might face problem
regarding the unavailability of the data during link failure or virus attacks or computer crash
(Cresswell & Sheikh, 2013).
Identification and suggestion to one of the barrier
One of the major barriers towards the implementation of the medical health record is the
proper usage of the information technology by the healthcare practitioners, staffs and the
clinicians (Nguyen, Bellucci & Nguyen, 2014).
When an organization implements the information technology tools for the medical
records it is always not easy for the medical staffs to experience a smooth transition (Khalifa,
2013). There are a large number of the organization that ignores the proper staff training and
education in order to make the transition a smooth one. Furthermore each of the departments
may require different trainings and each tools require different training. Thus, it is necessary for
the healthcare providers and the organizers to implement the various strategies in order to
educate and train the staffs regarding the usage of the various technologies. (Ajami & Bagheri-
Tadi, 2013). Training can often become an afterthought after a big technology, preventing the
employees from realising the usefulness of the new system. Hence it is necessary to listen to the
employee’s feedback.

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Conclusion
Thus, from the above study, it can be concluded that the implementation of the
information tools in healthcare records have several barriers that an organization faces. Such
issues need to be addressed so that the patients receive the proper healthcare and proper
treatment.

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Reference
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Cresswell, K., & Sheikh, A. (2013). Organizational issues in the implementation and adoption of
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Jawhari, B., Keenan, L., Zakus, D., Ludwick, D., Isaac, A., Saleh, A., & Hayward, R. (2016).
Barriers and facilitators to electronic medical record (EMR) use in an urban slum.
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Khalifa, M. (2013). Barriers to health information systems and electronic medical records
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Middleton, B., Bloomrosen, M., Dente, M. A., Hashmat, B., Koppel, R., Overhage, J. M., ... &
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Nguyen, L., Bellucci, E., & Nguyen, L. T. (2014). Electronic health records implementation: an
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Christodoulakis, C., Asgarian, A., & Easterbrook, S. (2016). Barriers to adoption of information
technology in healthcare. Proceedings of ACM CASCON conference, Toronto, Canada,
November 2017 (CASCON’17).