Implementation Of Electronic Medical Records: How Healthcare Providers Are Managing The Challenges Of Going Digital

Abstract

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">Electronic medical records (EMRs) are the newest form of documenting a patient’s medical record.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>An EMR is a system that contains a patient’s personal medical history, test results, dictations, and other medical and financial information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>EMRs will improve healthcare by enhancing patient care, preventative health, and provider convenience and is an extreme improvement to an already highly technological healthcare corporation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The implementation ‘wave’ is not happening just because it is an improvement to healthcare, but it is also moving forward because it is required by the U.S. government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>President Obama recently employed a stimulus package that will assist healthcare establishments with startup of electronic medical records.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Along with the great improvements and advantages come inconveniences, challenges, and high costs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>For large hospitals, EMR deployments can cost the organization millions of dollars; hospitals can spend from $25,000 to $60,000 per physician to deploy a system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>EMR deployment is a public policy challenge with the federal government possibly spending more than $20 billion in stimulus funds to reimburse providers for EMR implementations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>EMR system implementations are like any business process reengineering project because they cause many challenges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Employees are not always accepting of change and managing change effectively is critical to successful implementation of any new technology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Additionally, new electronic technologies increase privacy issues while at the same time healthcare facilities are becoming stricter with confidentiality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Electronic medical record implementation is complex, but the benefits of organization and improved healthcare outweigh the minor setbacks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In this study, data was gathered from two healthcare facilities through interviews of the leaders of the EMR implementation process at each facility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Trade journals and EMR vendor information was also explored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The goal was to explore the phenomenon of the EMR implementation in this short term research project.</span></p>