An Electronic Health Record ( Ehr ) - 1315 Words

Introduction The government has been trying to protect patients’ healthcare information since they first introduced The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA). Since that time, technology has paved the way for The Electronic Health Record (EHR). Those that promote the usage of the EHR as the standard of care, strongly believe that the risks of privacy are outweighed by the benefits that it brings. These benefits include, but are not limited to: improved patient care, decreased medical errors, and better collaboration between healthcare providers. This paper will focus on the benefits of the EHR, and how the government and the healthcare industry are addressing the privacy and security risks to patients’†¦show more content†¦Benefits for Patients and Providers In a study conducted by the Health Services Research on the â€Å"Clinical Benefits of Electronic Health Record Use†, 78 percent of Physicians said that the EHR in general improved patient care. This included: remote access to patient charts, alerts for potential medical errors and critical test results, along with recommendations for care and proper test selections, and improve communication with patients (King, J., Patel, V., Jamoom, E. W., Furukawa, M. F. (2014). The HealthIT.gov website publishes information to help patients, families, professionals and providers to understand what the EHR is and what it can provide. This is a list on their website of what the EHR can do: †¢ Contain a patient’s medical history, diagnoses, medications, treatment plans, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images, and laboratory and test results †¢ Allow access to evidence-based tools that providers can use to make decisions about a patient’s care †¢ Automate and streamline provider workflow (HealtIT.gov, n.d, â€Å"Electronic Health Records: The Basics† section, para 1) Not only can EHRs improve an individual patient’s healthcare, this information can help improve and protect the public health. Information that is collected can be shared with public health care organizations to help improve research and monitoring for the prevention and control of