Article Review

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Article Review

Summary

Electronic health records (EHR) are important tools in the administration of patient safety within health institutions. The increased in the number of patients who have adopted the EHR system is a clear indication that the system needs to be streamlined and refined to ensure that they can fully support the requirements by patients and physicians. The article discussed the main EHR goals such as safety concerns unique to EHR technology, mitigation of safety concerns in the use of EHR and using EHR to monitor patient safety. EHR-specific safety goals (e-PSGs) have been proposed for many years yet their implementation has been poor especially within healthcare providers. The last section of the article proposed several methods of application of the three-phase e-PSG framework and concluded with a set of recommendations on how to best implement the goals and realize a safe environment for patients.

Impact

EHRs assist in reconciling the separate information that is kept by different healthcare providers such as physicians and hospitals. EHR has also improved the administration of healthcare insurance by providing these companies with the financial aspects of the patients thereby bridging the gap between the two parties. EHR eliminates the use of paper records by computerizing all the aspects of data entry, collection and sharing. Therefore, patient information becomes easily available and accessible.

Opinion

I agree with the proposal to adopt and implement the EHR system within healthcare systems in the country. The system has been proved to work effectively by providing real time medical information to physicians on site and those working remotely. While it may seem expensive in the initial phase, EHR systems will eventually help in saving many lives.