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Improving Local Health Care

In: Computers and Technology

Submitted By darmwood
Words 1757
Pages 8
Improving Local Health Care

Demetrice Armwood

Harold Griffin, Ph.D.

HSA 520 – Health Information Systems

February 28, 2013

Improving healthcare at the local level is a very slow process. With all the new technology that has evolved, it has yet to reach the smaller practices and clinics on the local level. New technology has been created to eliminate the problems associated with accessing patient medical records, duplicating services, data organization, order entry and many other problems one may face in the healthcare industry. In my most recent conversation with a Licensed Practical Nurse at the local health department in Northeastern North Carolina, I was astonished to learn that this region, serving 12 counties, is still currently using paper file folders for recordkeeping of all of patient medical records. Although they have begun the process of seeking to move toward an electronic health records (EHR) application system, it is a very slow process as they are currently keeping records on both paper files and the newly EHR system. By implementing the EHR system, access to medical records will be available to all persons involved with caring for each patient while alleviating the endless paper trail associated with medical records.
Garets and Davis (2006) report that many people in the healthcare industry and the government confuse the terms electronic medical record (EMR) and electronic health record (EHR). Garets and Davis (2006) proposed the following definition for the two interchangeably terms:
The EMR is an application environment composed of the clinical data repository, clinical decision support, controlled medical vocabulary, order entry, computerized provider order entry, pharmacy, and clinical documentation applications. The data in the EMR is the legal record of what happened to the patient during their encounter at

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