Electronic Health Records at Calvary Healthcare: An Overview

This report examines the implementation and impact of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) within Calvary Healthcare's aged care facilities. It begins with an introduction to EHRs and their evolution, followed by an overview of Calvary Healthcare's operations, including its residential care facilities. The report delves into the benefits of EHRs, such as improved clinical record monitoring and enhanced decision-making, while also addressing challenges and ethical considerations like privacy, security, and data accuracy. A SWOT analysis of the EHR system is presented, along with nurses' perceptions of EHRs and the factors influencing their adoption. The report also discusses ethical issues related to EHRs, including privacy and security breaches, system implementation challenges, and data inaccuracies. Finally, the report concludes by highlighting the overall positive impact of EHRs in residential aged care facilities, leading to enhanced clinical record monitoring and better decision-making, and includes a quiz to test the reader's understanding of the concepts discussed.

INTRODUCTION TO EHR
NAME OF THE STUDENT
NAME OF THE

RESEARCH QUESTION
How is Calvary Healthcare dealing with the Electronic Health Records
within the age care sector?

INTRODUCTION
A medical report or medical record is a
collection of files where the evidence
of an encounter between clinician and
patient is stored. The concept of this
medical record comes from ancient
times. Medical records are
the combination of the auto-reported
patient information with the typically
recorded physician diagnosis
observations on paper-based media.

Electronic Health Records
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.

OVERVIEW – 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.

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.

SWOT analysis of EHR system
STRENGTH WEAKNESS
• Timely and quick access to information
• Low-volume storage of information
• Reduction of duplicate testing
• Lack of necessary equipment and hardware
appropriate for EHR implementation
• Creation of typing problems by secretaries
• Being time-consuming and difficult to link the
information contained in legacy systems to that
in new systems
OPPURTUNITY THREAT
• Information exchange and better governance of
data among healthcare professionals
• Being used as a primary source of knowledge for
practitioners and public service providers
• Access to a variety of health statistics
• Absence of planning and management in the
electronic health records market
• Problems surrounding programming and
applications built according to specifications
• Limited funds for the creation, deployment and
utilization of electronic health records

Nurses Perception towards EHR
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).
It is challenging and frustrating for
the nurses to move to a new
electronic health record. The
design of electronic health records
involves concentrating on
accessibility and customer retention
(Fields, Gallo and Cone 2013).

EHR Adoption in Healthcare system (Pennic, 2014)
EHR satisfaction among
healthcare physicians
(Pennic, 2012)
Safety related issues in
EHR (Schulte and Fry,
2019)

Ethical Issues and Responsibilities of EHR
There are four ethical issues
concerning the EHR (Ozair,
Jamshed, Sharma and Aggarwal
2015) -
• Privacy and Confidentiality
• Security Breaches
• System Implementation
• Data Inaccuracies
There are several responsibilities
or can be said function of an EHR
system (American Academy of
Family Physicians 2016) –
• Identifying and maintaining a
patient’s health record
• Management of patient
demographics
• Managing the list of problems
• Managing the list of medicines
• Demonstrate healthcare plans,
policies and procedures

CONCLUSION
Broadly speaking, the adoption of EHRs in
residential old age facilities was found to be more
productive than not. Adoption of EHRs in
residential old age facilities culminated in
enhanced clinical record monitoring that made for
better decision-making.

QUIZ
1. An EHR may involve
information about a patient's –
A. Medicines and treatment
B. Height and weight
C. Medical history
D. All of the above
2. How is an EHR better than the
traditional paper based recording
method?
A. EHR requires more storage
space
B. EHR is much at faster retrieving
medical information
C. EHR is useless
D. EHR increases health care costs
for patients
3. What is the full form of EHR -
A. Electric Health Resource
B. Electronic Health Record
C. Electronic Health Receiver
D. All of the above
4. EHR system can be
customized according to the
suitability of the user -
A. True
B. Flase
5. Can EHR help in reducing the
cost via less paperwork and
better security
A. Yes
B. No
6. EHR system are very
complicated to use. Thus, it
cannot deliver the patient’s
health information properly on
time whenever required.
A. True
B. False
C. Depends on the skills of the
user.