Institutions:
Summary
The article talks about the introduction of Health Electronic Records in the health centers. The law had been proposed in the health sector to help in the management of the hospital records. The article provides the guidelines required from the hospitals to adopt the new technology. It goes ahead to outline the advantages it will add to the hospitals. (Tremper, K., & Kheterpal, S., 2011). However, before any hospital would adopt it, there are some requirements that have to be met for them to be certified to operate electronically. It steered a strong opposition from the health professionals as they cited that the requirements were so high and required to be adjusted to make it easy for implementation.
Impacts
The proposed law would definitely have an impact on the health care systems and policies. By monitoring the health records electronically, data of the patients would not easily be lost. A vice that is common in the manual storage of data. The ability of the doctors to share the information of a particular disease would help different them access different ideas and offer their advice. The records would not hinder the patients from accessing different health facilities because; their information would easily be accessed and provided with the prescribed medicine irrespective of the location (Tremper, K., & Kheterpal, S., 2011). More patients would be attended to within a short period of time as the Electronic Health records was faster. The result would be the patients deriving more satisfaction due to the increased productivity of the health personnel.
The charges of different health facilities would be analyzed by the patients as the law proposed the posting of the charges online, to help the patients to make informed decisions depending on the cost implications in the different hospitals. The corruption in the health sector would be reduced due to the electronic payments. The avoidance of people coming into contact with the cash would reduce the temptations of bribing and corruption in general. Accountants work would be made easier when preparing financial statements as the numbers would be electronically calculated. It also enhanced accuracy in the calculations thus; providing the actual financial status of the hospitals.
The law would help in the social interactions among the doctors that would enable the sharing of the ideas online. The social ties among them would be improved resulting to a peaceful coexistence leading to uplifting and observing the ethical values. The unethical behavior had become so rampant, due to the lack of monitoring in the profession. It would be a motivator to the doctors and the nurses since; it proposed an increase in their salaries. In return, they had to improve on their service qualities in relation to handling of services.
The cost implications associated with the installation of the systems would be a financial burden to the hospitals. The hospitals would be forced to dig dipper into their accounts. To avoid this, the doctors would transfer the burden of the cost to the patients by charging them more. Not many patients would be willing to be charged high fees. and most of them would reject it. People with low income levels would be locked out from easily accessing the health care facilities due to the fear of inability of raising the increased bills.
Missing information
It would have facilitated my understanding if the author had used real cases which showed the hospitals that had adopted the proposed law. Henceforth, becoming easier to ascertain what the exact impacts of the law are, instead of relying on assumptions (Tremper, K., & Kheterpal, S., 2011). People incline more towards the visual facts than the assumptions. It is for this reason, that the doctors were not ready to implement the law as they feared redundancy. He would have gone further to explain what impacts it would have on the health practitioners.. The fear of being laid down was one of the many reasons the doctors were reluctant in its use.
The attachment of how the machines worked would help me understand its operations and processes. Leaving the information open would give room for guesswork, and it is not correct. It was hard to understand how it would look like, and how well it would be fixed in the hospital systems (Tremper, K., & Kheterpal, S., 2011). The proposed needed to blend well with the already existing systems, and help in the making the services effective and efficient. There was no statistical data available for me. I would have been able to see the number of hospitals that were against the proposal as they would assist me to find out the viability of the proposal.
New information learned
In knew that doctors are entitled to receive salary and incentive increments based on their levels of expertise, and the increased cost of living but i had no idea that they would be considered for salary raise just because; of adopting a proposed law into their hospitals. It would appear that the law had a hidden agenda, as it would be alleged to have some sought of coercion from the government.
I also knew that the nursing profession had the right and freedom to choose the way to follow in relation to the adoption of electronic health records. Since it was a proposed bill, and it had not been passed, in did not know that the doctors who failed to implement it would be fined, something that would bring conflict.
I knew that there is electronic storage of the patients’ information but only knew that the information would be confidential, therefore, would not be availed to the third party. I did not have a slight idea that the information would be accessible by different doctors at different locations. I only thought that the files would be accessed in the specific hospital the patient was.
References:
Tremper, K. K., & Kheterpal, S. (2011). Computers and Perioperative Clinical Information Systems in
Anesthesia Practice, an Issue of Anesthesiology Clinics. London: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Article:
www.healthaffairs.org/healthpolicybriefs/brief.php?brief_i
