EMR Effects On Health Care

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EMR Affects on Patient Care How will the use of the electronic medical record (EMR) affect patient care? What role do nurses play in the implementation and integration of EMRs in to the health care system? Technology is changing our world at top speed and it is becoming increasingly evident in many health care settings (Huston, 2013). There are numerous technologies that will ultimately change the practice of nursing in the coming decades (Huston, 2013), with one of those changes being the widespread use of the electronic medical record (EMR). An EMR is “an electronic application through which individuals can access, manage, and share their health information and that of others for whom they are authorized, in a private, secure, and confidential …show more content…
The use of technology in the health care field would exponentially enhance the quality and safety of health care, according to Black et al (2011). Although the implementation of digitized health care brings about great costs, ultimately the use of such technology would provide an efficient and cost effective strategy to improve health care across the U.S., as well as internationally (Black et al, 2011). Integration of the EMR into health care practice are currently underway, being scrutinized, reviewed and researched, with a significant impact of expenditure, nationally. England alone has invested close to 13 billion dollars for their use of a National Program for Information Technology (NPIT), while the United States, under the Obama administration has committed close to 40 billion dollars in the EMR or the Electronic Health Record (EHR), according to Black et al …show more content…
In order to break free from the large gaps in knowledge regarding the use of EMR among health care providers and speed up the adoption rate, evidenced based research via high quality surveys and studies are being performed in attempts to show that EMR use might be beneficial to many providers across the board (Jha et al., 2006). One such study took in to account the use of EMRs among registered nurses. “The purpose of the study was to examine factors associated with electronic personal health records (ePHRs) use by nurses for their own health management (Gartell et al., 2014).” As nurses, we are to promote self-care among our patients, as well as to promote active participation of our patients in managing their own health care, however, not much is known regarding their own use of EMRs or ePHRs (Gartrell et al., 2014). In the study conducted by Gartrell et al. (2014), 664 registered nurses (RN), working in 12 hospitals throughout the Maryland and the Washington, DC area participated in an online survey in December 2013 to January 2014. This study used multiple logistic regression models to determine factors associated with EMR use (Gartrell et al., 2014). More than a third of those participants were already EMR users and although there were no variations found between EMR users and nonusers by demographical or job related information, the end result was that EMR