Proposal for the Use of Electronic Health Records
Introduction
The perspective of Financial Challenges
Ladies and gentlemen, all protocol observed. This is a proposal for the use of electronic health records, EHR.
To begin with, this is the discussion of the case and financial challenges and issues of implementing Electronic Health Records, EHR. Hospitals and health centers facilities across the country are in the mission of deploying and adopting EHR systems, but they face several challenges. These challenges mostly are affecting the no developed areas such as rural areas. Although the adoption of these EHR systems is at the peak, the right number of health facilities are on slow about it. With the study, there are numerous areas to be noted where these healthcare and hospitals are stressed. These areas include EHRs resistance among physician, physician notes implementation, complex work through meaningful criteria, and cost control for EHR use.
However, the study shows that it is only a few urban hospitals that have adopted the EHR. Those that have taken full EHR systems are reported to have succeeded in the following function such as doctors assessment, physician notes, patients demographics, list of the patient problem, list of patient medication, medical summaries, clinical, laboratory and radiology reports, patients demographics and medical order entries and diagnostics analysis result. Financially, more hospitals and health centers are reported to have ongoing costs and upfront of using EHR. Hospitals with no particular notes are likely to face financial penalties. The absence of the use of EHR is the reduction in hospitals reimbursement by a more significant percentage.
The potential EHR systems adopters need some original information about the cost and other resources required during the implementation of and maintenance of the systems. These financial costs, which were seen as economic challenges, are hardware and software license, cloud hosting, and technical maintenance costs. In addition, there are other non-financial costs which are incurred project finance and hence are termed to be a challenge. These costs may comprise groups of personnel.
The first group belongs to senior personnel who are in implementers. This group consists of managers for workflow and training, the senior disease managers, the information technology group, project consultant and manager, and system analyzers. Meanwhile, these groups of personnel were to be sustained financially and hence find it a challenge for EHR implementation.
The second group belongs to individuals who played a part in implementation crew. What the group did all pertains implementation including planning, re-engineering flow of work, and training. The training composed of the physician who spearheaded the implementation stage which includes system practice, clinic staff, and office managerial team. All these personnel in this group requires a large amount of finance, and hence it’s a challenge for EHR implementation in hospitals.
Third and most important group belong to end users. The end users include clinical and non-clinical staff and physicians. The financial challenges come in the way that these staffs need to be trained on how to use an electronic health record system. In addition, these individual workforces need to prepare well to handle the system’s error, such as patient information need to be loaded. Training and system maintenance came out to be a challenge and therefore a big hindrance for the use of electronic health record systems.
Throughout our research, we prepared this proposal to understand and predict the cost of adopting, application and maintenance of the EHR systems. The perspective of the financial challenge is looked at during development and design, and the use of current EHR systems. Henceforth, coming up with properly working arrangements is not easy. It should be understood that migrating from paperwork to paperless for the first time is a daunting choice and full of financial challenges.
The figure above shows the substantial challenges to current Electronic Health Record systems implementation and use amongst hospitals.
Financial Statements
Costs Estimate
The initial step when choosing a working EHR system is when the whole health information technology is ready for assessment, that is, the availability of free online tools. This assessment will help in evaluating operational and financial readiness as well as give enough practice during the implementation of Electronic Health Records. The effort of implementing these systems is jointly made by staffs and clinicians.
Regarding finance, there is consideration of both total and an initial cost of implementation and ownership respectively, of EHR systems. The given estimated value is 1.5 million US dollars. In addition, the average price of adopting EHR amounts to between $30,000 and maintenance ranges from $1,000 to $15,000 per clinic officer. In this case, the hardware and software selections vary significantly, service strategy selected, and implementation ideal. Moreover, the cost of training is precisely covered and may differ from one supplier to the other. During the implementation stage, there are other unknown costs which include reduced revenue and loss of productivity. Long term storage may be added to the cost of medical records.
The estimated cost of adopting EHR systems may vary from depreciable capital expenditure for hardware to functioning payments for software hosting, licensing and technical back up. Capital expenditure may differ regarding the number of doctors practicing. On the other hand, there are nonfinancial costs which comprise time used during practices and payment roll for staffs like IT group and training managers (Kruse et al., 2016. Furthermore, there would be an external consultant that need compensation for their time spent during the implementation and preparation of HER systems.
We will consider the time to be spent by each physician and the end users in training, practice and during the simulation. There is a need for estimating time on interviews with the implementation team. Time spent during the implementation stage will be measured from network perspectives, the discrete practice and end user, using backup documents like emails, and calendar dates. In addition, there will be payroll data to be used for assigning regular hourly pay to estimate total time and cost spent during training.
The implementation cost will include all objects that relate to EHR systems before and after the launch. The nonfinancial cost will be estimated financially from the current price of items, goods, and services. We will perform an analysis to measure the value of maintenance. These costs will incur software hosting, licenses, and professional care. Finally, there will need for cost estimation for maintenance time from launch date to a minimum of one year.
Study Estimated Financial Results
Health centers will require to adopt electronic health record systems. What every clinic will help in primary care rehearses to encounter all clinical challenges.
Hardware Costs
Health centers will require a one-time system purchase estimated to amount $ 25,500 for cables, switches, and connection for wireless internet per practice. Also, there is an approximation of $7,500 per medical doctor or clinical officer meant for complete computer systems, printers, modems, and scanner machines.
Software and Maintenance Costs
The cost of maintaining, which began at implementation, will be amounted to approximately $14,900 annually per doctor for software hosting, licensing and networking. The provided network support will cost an additional of $2,700 annually, totaling an approximate of $17,600 per physician meant for maintenance (Health Information Technology, 2015).
We will accumulate the time to be used throughout the implementation course by the team of network, users and practice implementers.
Network Implementation Team
The cost of network implementation team will result from the spent time on all activities. The estimation will be 469hrs to be consumed by the team. In addition, there will be 12hrs added time for practice before the launch. The total number of hours will be 481hrs amounting to $29,050 per practice.
Above tables the estimation of time and cost for network implementation for an Electronic Health Record, EHR. Before the implementation stage, there will be 120 days before the launch of the system. Therefore, there are 60 more days after the start. The technical bench deployment will comprise several processes such as installing, acquiring, testing, connectivity, networking, cabling and finally communication.
Implementation and Practice Team
The team will spend time as shown in the table below. The team estimation is roughly 130hrs and cost incurred is estimated to be $7,857 for full implementation.
The above table shows time and costs implementation and practice team to implement an electronic health record system.
End User Practice
The end users will spend time during practice and implementation. We will assume that the doctors will have to split entering data into eighty-five hours. The team is estimated a total of 135hours was amounting to $10, 400 spent per technician.
Time and cost estimated for every physician for end-user activities. This will associate with the implementation of an EHR system.
Total Estimated Cost
The table below shows an estimation of the total cost for implementing an EHR system after its launch. The estimate of the systems will be approximately $162,050 for sixty days after launch. Moreover, the maintenance cost is added to the same with an evaluation of $233,280 for the first year.
Conclusion
Diligent records are the first vault of data in the information heightened healthcare industry. But clinical information is logically at risk to be robotized, the current, pervasive mode for recording steady thought data remains the paper record. Paper records have the upsides of being healthy to customers and reduced; when they are not exceptionally broad, customers can immediately examine through them. Paper records, regardless, have honest to goodness, superseding limitations that as regularly as conceivable baffle customers and support inefficient perspectives in the healthcare structure. Further, the impact of these confinements is creating as the health care system ends up being more unusual. Present day understanding thought necessities had outgrown the paper record.
Quality improvement and cost control continue being good stresses for the healthcare business. Quality assertion; utilize organization; appropriateness, sufficiency, and results from examination; clinical practice guidelines; and regard purchasing are by and large undeniable responses to the quality or cost challenges looked by present-day health care. Each one of these exercises extends the genuine enthusiasm for complete, exact, instantly open patient data.
Health care specialists’ today stand up to an exceptional information impact as the sum and multifaceted nature of patient data and therapeutic learning augmentation step by step. Current patient records can’t adequately manage every one of the information required for patient thought. Paper understanding records have not kept and can’t keep pace with the rapidly changing healthcare system. Hence, they logically obstruct convincing essential initiative all through the healthcare portion—from the bedside to the itemizing of national health care game plan.
Some healthcare associations are starting at now applying PC advances to this information organization challenge. Overall, regardless, the scattering of information organization advancements has been slower in health care than in other information certain organizations. Also, most of information organization applications in the healthcare region has focused on budgetary and administrative rather than clinical data.
Future Study
Future study on the topic of EHR systems implementation, there should survey the impact of adopting the system more so during an implementation stage. There is the need also for scrutiny of over time.
Recommendations
These are the skillful offers recommendations for actual EHR implementation. Although the adoption of the electronic health systems is not easy, the physicians should work tirelessly if they are willing. For more successful and fruitful system functions, there is a need for teamwork, to develop high and clear strategic plans and use of modern technology. Finally, the process of using EHR systems is tiresome and full of stress. To overcome this stress and dull is to practices enough for properly and teamwork.
The warning gathering assumes that future patient records must be more than a way to deal with patient store data—they ought to in like manner reinforce the clinical decision process and help upgrade the idea of patient thought. Achieving extensive use of EHRs is an essential section of building a national health care information system that can reinforce the game plan of facilitated health care benefits transversely over settings and providers of thought. Further, extensive use of EHRs would add to the social occasion of patient thought data as a national healthcare resource. Achieving these goals requires that EHRs be more than robotized paper records.
There are several recommendations proposed including:
Health care experts and associations ought to receive the electronic health record, EHR, as the standard for therapeutic and every other document identified with patient consideration.
Both people in general and private areas ought to extend support for the EHR and EHR framework execution through research, advancement, and showing ventures. In particular, the board suggests that Congress approve and fitting assets to actualize the innovative work plan laid out thus. The board of trustees additionally prescribes that private establishments and merchants finance programs that help and encourage this creative work motivation.
The expenses of EHR frameworks ought to be shared by the individuals who profit by the estimation of the EHR. In particular, the full costs of executing and working EHR frameworks ought to be figured into repayment levels or installment calendars of both open and private area outsider payers. Also, clients of free databases should bolster the expenses of making such databases.
Healthcare proficient schools and associations should upgrade instructive projects for understudies and experts in the utilization of PCs EHR frameworks for patient consideration, training, and research.
