1. What are EHRs?
EHR is an acronym that stands for Electronic Health Record. EHRs are digital collections of vital patient information such as medical history, treatments, and medication use. This virtual data can be shared broadly across various healthcare services and professionals for the diagnostic assessment of a patient (Young et al., 2018). EHRs have been implemented since the year 2009 when the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act was created.
2. Are EHRs widely used?
The use of EHRs is quickly gaining popularity with 67% of healthcare providers in the US reporting to have used them. Additionally, the adoption of EHRs has been continuously increasing since the year 2012 to 2017. …show more content…
There are many EHR vendors in the healthcare market. The massive presence of businesses that provide these services gives patients and healthcare providers a broad variety of EHRs to choose from. Each EHR vendor offers a system that is unique, which becomes challenging when there is need to share patient data. In some cases, such as earthquake emergencies, victims may receive emergency health care from a professional that does not have their patient records. It becomes difficult sharing information if the usual healthcare provider of the client uses a different EHR vendor from the emergency healthcare provider. Vital time is wasted when trying to obtain the client's records (Moriarty, 2017). Additionally, patients have exclusive access, and they can move data to a different storage option that is inaccessible to the healthcare provider. This becomes an issue in emergency situations where a client cannot offer consent or if they are unconscious and cannot provide access to their records (Moriarty, 2017). Therefore, the sharing of patient data is not as efficient as expected with the increased use of …show more content…
How many EHR vendors exist and what are some considerations made by EHR purchasers? Are there any popular EHR vendors?
There are approximately one thousand one hundred vendors that are present in the healthcare market. This number has doubled over the last four years (Carlson, 2017). Vendors concentrate on the connectivity, meaningful use achievement, and costs when marketing their EHRs. This is because 51.6% of healthcare providers in the US consider connectivity and meaningful use achievement when selecting their vendor; while 43.2% of the healthcare practitioners cite the cost as a significant factor, they consider when acquiring an EHR system. The four most popular EHR vendors are Cerner, Mckesson, Epic, and Allscripts Healthcare Solutions; which possess the first, second, third, and fourth positions respectively (Carlson, 2017).
5. Reasons for using the above fact questions.
The above questions are essential for offering insight into the current state of EHRs. By answering the questions, the reader gets an opportunity to explore various aspects of EHRs. Some of the factors addressed are an introduction to EHRs, use of EHRs, the effectiveness of EHRs, and information on the businesses that provide EHRs in the healthcare