Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records: Experiences from the Field and Future Opportunities
Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records: Experiences from the Field and Future Opportunities Full Text
Abstract: The authors attempted to provide a review of the meaningful use (MU) policy relating to the use of medication. In the attempt to deliver a cooperatively established recommendation to assistance present and future health information technology (HIT) policy.
Methods: The method was atypical in the fact that though it took a systematic approach. The “specific issues and recommendations” where debated and established on as a collection of individuals rather than being concluded on a predefined algorithm. The total number of participants was 35. The roles of the individuals all varied from Chief Medical Informatics Officer and Chief Medical Information Officer where among the many. The group were asked opened ended questions. Thus allowing the group to be provided with a variety of answers (some would assume would be opinionated rather than fact based). The author did note that the discussion was based on the principles of consensus decision making.
Results: It was determined that additional consideration should be concentrated on the configuration of local HIT that improve on the population health care essentials. Further results showed that patients were at risk due to the quality of the medication list that the EHR produced (though it was pointed out that this was due to missing parts, duplication's, and inaccurate prescription information.) Thus superior tools are required to support this procedure. It was also suggested that the electronic health record (EHR) should allow for the utilization of external data to assist on comprehensive patient list. Further it was shown that the list containing allergies of the patient were also in need of improvement. This particular improvement only got so far as to suggest that patients needed to be involved during this procedure, however, the group disagreed on the patients actual roll.
Conclusion: Though MU had aggressively pursued the use of EHRs the benefits are yet to be seen in the realm of quality and safety. The overall consensus was that MU should obtain more flexibility in the ways that they attempt to share-information.
Comments: I feel that this study, lacks merit and evidence that truly support the authors’ claims. I feel that a more methodical approach could and should have been taken in this study. As well as the pointed out “issues” appear to be human error due to lack of training or preparation.
References
Slight, S., Berner, E., Galanter, W., Huff, S., Lambert, B., Lannon, C., ... Bates, D. (2015, Jul-Sep). Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records: Experiences From the Field and Future Opportunities. JMIR Medical Informatics , 3(3), 1-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/medinform.4457
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