The EHR is associated with a myriad of benefits for both the staff and the patients in terms of promoting the overall process of care provision. Among the EHR benefits that accrue to the staff include; easy access to patient data as well as a more effective way of sharing and hence coordinating patient care. To a large extent, these benefits have helped in staff motivation due to less strain as it used to be with paper-based records (Lakhan, 2015). On the other hand, patients enjoy a myriad of benefits as well. These include; a more effective and coordinated care process that helps in the achievement of the desired care outcomes as well as reduction of the human error margin, hence reducing the likelihood of missed care or medication errors.
In as much as EHR is associated with these benefits, it presents its disadvantageous side to both staff and patients, especially when it comes to the possibility of privacy/confidentiality breach due to cyber-related crimes (Campos-Castillo & Anthony, 2015). This can be the case when the system is not well secured. This is a problem that affects both staff and patients. Additionally, financing of the EHR system may require patients to pay more for healthcare. The present-day technology is developing at a rather fast pace and keeping up with the emerging trends and preventing obsolescence, staffs are supposed to engage in lifelong which is time consuming amidst huge workloads (Beasley & Sinsky , 2014).
References
Beasley, J. W., & Sinsky, C. A. (2014). Electronic health records. Annals of internal medicine, 161(9), 680.
Campos-Castillo, C., & Anthony, D. L. (2015). The double-edged sword of electronic health records: implications for patient disclosure. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 22(e1), e130-e140.
Lakhan, S. E. (2015). Clinicians and The Modern EHR: Statistician, Scribe or Storyteller?. International Archives of Medicine, 8.
