Electronic Health Records: Benefits and Contribution to Healthcare System
Electronic health records (EHRs) are gaining attention and interest in health systems worldwide. This chapter describes the benefits of EHRs compared to their paper-based predecessor, and the problems and potential uses of EHRs. Rehabilitation for PWDs is
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Electronic Health Records: Benefits and Contribution to Healthcare System Sirinart Tongsiri
Electronic health records (EHRs) are gaining more attention and interests in health systems worldwide. Safran et al. offered the definition of EHRs as the information system including “personal data created, developed, maintained, and/or provided by clinicians, providers, and allied health providers in direct patient care; an electronic application containing health information about individuals that is used by clinicians, providers, and allied health professionals to provide direct care for the individuals” [1]. This chapter aims to describe benefits of EHRs compared with its predecessor: a paper-based system followed by problems and the potential use of EHRs. Rehabilitation for Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) will be used as an example in this chapter.
13.1 Benefits of EHRs There are a great amount of benefits of EHRs both from patient side and the provider as well as the system side. EHRs may reduce the problem of patient nonadherence [2], could improve practitioner performance [3], caregivers’ decisions, quality of care and patients’ quality of life [4, 5]. The Obama administration allocated resources up to $27 billion in ten years through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) to promote the use of EHRs among clinicians and hospitals [4]. The study was conducted to compare the service performances of physicians using EHRs in the US healthcare settings. Ten quality measures were used to measure the quality of care including: (1) data information set for patients with diabetes, (2) eye exams, (3) hemoglobin A1c testing, (4) low-density lipoprotein, (5) cholesterol testing and nephropathy testing,
S. Tongsiri (B) Wichian Sittiprapaporn Mahasarakham University, Maha Sarakham, Thailand N. Chilamkurti et al. (eds.), Next-Generation Wireless Technologies, Computer Communications and Networks, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-5164-7_13, © Springer-Verlag London 2013
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(6) breast cancer screening, (7) chlamydia screening, (8) colorectal cancer screening, (9) medication for asthma and (10) children with pharyngitis testing and respiratory tract treatment. It was found that the settings where EHRs were implemented had significantly higher performances on the measures than those settings with the paper-recorded system. This implied that EHRs could, to some extent, improve quality of ambulatory care. Dorr et al. [6] conducted a review of the literature from 1996–2005 on the use of information systems to support the chronic illness care. The reviewed chronic illnesses mainly included diabetes, heart disease, and mental illnesses. The positive outcome related to the provision of EHRs, electronic schedule, computerized prompts, decision support and personal health records, however, the concerns should be directed to the implementation system regarding the costs, data privacy and security as well as the systematic workflow. Health providers were required to create health records
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