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Potential Challenges of Informatics Technologies

Badaki Peter Ilesanmi

IF003 Walden University

NURS 6053 Interprofessional Organizational and Systems Leadership

Dr Vannesia Morgan-Smith

May 7th, 2022

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Electronic heath records provide beneficial support for both patients and healthcare

providers. Reduction in the costs of care, quicker and qualitative healthcare delivery are some of

these benefits. This tool makes the job of a nurse informaticist and clinician easier and efficient.

However, as laudable as the usefulness of EHR in facilitating health information

exchange between care providers and patients or other organizations, patient safety compromise

has continued to pose serious threat to its functionality in the healthcare settings.

Therefore, this paper describes patient safety as a common challenge of Electronic Health

Records (EHR), and how it affects nursing informatics in healthcare outcomes.

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Background on common issues: Challenges in Nursing Informatics

Electronic health record (EHR) is a modern way of digitizing patients clinical or health

details in terms of diagnoses, treatment, and medication. Benefits such as cost reduction, patient

satisfaction, and enhanced patient safety are associated with electronic health records. However,

Kataria, & Ravindran (2020) identify patient safety compromise as one of the current problems

of electronic health records and it manifests when patient medical records are mismatched or

duplicated (p.264).

Patient Safety and Nursing Informatics in Health outcomes

Nursing informatics facilitate the designing and implementing of emerging digital

health technologies including the electronic health records to achieve health outcomes such as

reduction in readmission, costs of care, improved patient safety and coordinated care. However,

mismatching a patient’s record to another or patient misidentification could result in a patient

having duplicate medical records in multiple care providers’ database and consequently sabotage

data security and patient safety including wrong diagnosis, harm and data or privacy breach.

For instance, Riplinger, Piera-Jiménez, & Dooling, (2020) agree that when a patient is

incorrectly matched to another patient’s record, patient care and safety are jeopardized as

incorrect data can cascade to a multitude of internal and external systems and databases such as

laboratory, radiology, and health information networks. (p.81). Thus, the nursing informatics

goal of optimizing information and technology to improve safety care for patient and overall

healthcare outcomes is undermined in such situation.

To illustrate this further, consider the case of a woman whose mammogram was assigned

to another woman’s chart and had her mammogram nowhere to be found, her diagnosis was
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delayed until the clinicians learned of the incorrect patient matching, thus delaying her treatment

(Jason Christopher, 2020).

Strategies to Overcome Electronic Health Records Common Challenge

First, redesign and adopt electronic health records to suit clinicians’ specific c needs. (Kataria, &

Ravindran, 2020). Appropriate or certified EHRs systems/tools that will reduce costs of care,

promote quality patient care and healthcare outcomes should be initiated as recommended by the

Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECT) Act for issuing

electronic prescriptions and for the exchange of electronic health information to improve quality

of care. (HITECH Act Enforcement Interim Final Rule, 2017).

Second, integrate Artificial Intelligent component with patient medical records to provide

decision support with predictive analytics capabilities at the point of care. (Kataria, & Ravindran,

2020). This will enhance productivity and the quality of care.

Third, provide high quality education or training for the care providers to enable them

master EHR functionality necessary to overcome problems related to EHRs. (Longhurst et al.,

2019; Kataria, & Ravindran, 2020). This will promote system user friendliness or system

usability and increase nursing output.

Above all, the Nursing Informatics specialist should be involved in the decision-making

process in system implementation to get the scope of user roles and the impact of the system on

their workflow.

In conclusion, understanding common challenges of electronic health records (EHR) and

how nursing informatics can employ information and technologies to mitigate problems related

to duplicating and mismatching of patients’ clinical records is a panacea to realizing healthcare

outcomes.
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Reference

Jason Christopher (2020, March 12). 3 Consequences of Patient Matching, Health Record

Issues. EHR Intelligence-xtelligent Healthcare Media. Retrieved from

https://ehrintelligence.com/news/3-consequences-of-patient-matching-health-

record-issues May 7, 2022

Kataria, S., & Ravindran, V. (2020). Electronic health records: a critical appraisal of

strengths and limitations. The journal of the Royal College of Physicians of

Edinburgh, 50(3), 262–268. https://doi.org/10.4997/JRCPE.2020.309

Office for Civil Rights. (2017, June 16). HITECH Act Enforcement Interim Final Rule.

Retrieve from https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special-topics/hitech-

act-enforcement-interim-final-rule/index.html May 5, 2022

Riplinger, L., Piera-Jiménez, J., & Dooling, J. P. (2020). Patient Identification

Techniques - Approaches, Implications, and Findings. Yearbook of medical

informatics, 29(1), 81–86. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0040-1701984

Roles for Nursing. Orthopedic nursing, 36(1), 12–25.

https://doi.org/10.1097/NOR.0000000000000308