In my clinical practice, I had experience with the implementation of EPR (Electronic Patient Record), a system that brings together clinical and administrative data across different platforms. Initially, I was hugely in favor of the use of EPR in a hospital setting as it accounts for availability, legibility, and accuracy of data. However, with time, I have realized that health information technologies have both vices and virtues.
The first and biggest benefit that I discovered is associated with patient satisfaction. My observations are consistent with a study by Sabahi, Ahmadian, Mirzaee, and Khajouei (2017) which revealed that 98% of patients were happy to access their laboratory results online. At the same time, as a health practitioner, I often encountered situations where my colleagues were involved in lengthy online conversations with patients who requested result interpretation.
That downside to sharing health information via email was pointed out by Miller, Latulipe, Melius, Quandt, and Arcury (2016) in their study. Moreover, some medical professionals were confused about the symptom categorization that the software offered.
To facilitate the implementation of HIT in a clinical setting, managers and administrators should introduce regulations concerning staff working hours to be spent on using software and educating patients. New policies should aim at preventing staff from being overwhelmed by training and use of the software (Paterick, Patel, & Paterick, 2018). Product developers should interact more closely with health practitioners to understand their needs (McGonigle, 2017).
For instance, Jones et al. (2017) outline four needs: resident assessment, communication with providers, care planning, and medical interpretation. Ideally, developers should gain feedback in the beginning stage of developing a product. For instance, the Meaningful Use program was not associated with a reduction in hospital readmissions meaning that there is a lot left to be desired (Unruh, Jung, Vest, Casalino, & Kaushal, 2017). Thus, end-user testing should be a requirement since it allows for assessing the efficiency of the software.
References
Jones, W., Drake, C., Mack, D., Reeder, B., Trautner, B., & Wald, H. L. (2017). Developing mobile clinical decision support for nursing home staff assessment of urinary tract infection using goal-directed design. Applied Clinical Informatics, 8(2), 632-650.
McGonigle, D. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge. Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.
Miller Jr, D. P., Latulipe, C., Melius, K. A., Quandt, S. A., & Arcury, T. A. (2016). Primary care providers’ views of patient portals: Interview study of perceived benefits and consequences. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 18(1).
Paterick, Z. R., Patel, N. J., & Paterick, T. E. (2018). Unintended consequences of the electronic medical record on physicians in training and their mentors. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 94(1117), 659-661.
Sabahi, A., Ahmadian, L., Mirzaee, M., & Khajouei, R. (2017). Patients’ preferences for receiving laboratory test results. The American Journal of Managed Care, 23(4), e113-e119.
Unruh, M. A., Jung, H. Y., Vest, J. R., Casalino, L. P., & Kaushal, R. (2017). Meaningful use of electronic health records by outpatient physicians and readmissions of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries. Medical Care, 55(5), 493-499.