Electronic Mental Health Record Essay

Words: 542
Pages: 3

Cloning in Electronic Mental Health Record: Understanding the Perils and Suggested Safeguards Information technology (IT), is becoming a very central part of most people’s lives. This is not limited to social media, our work, and for our entertainment at home. It is also becoming a very crucial and time saving tool within the medical field through electronic health records (EHR). Not only is this new and improving form of documentation saving time, but it also is saving hospitals and medical facilities a great deal of money. “According to the Institute of Medicine (2012), when health IT is designed and implemented appropriately, it can ultimately make health care better for all Americans by improving performance and communication among health care providers that leads to efficient and safe patient care (Repique, 2013).” While these forms of electronic documentation present great potential benefits for the medical industry, there is the growing potential for violation of patient confidentiality and safety. In addition, when EHR is misused or abused, it causes such complications as “fraudulent billing and incorrect third-party payments” …show more content…
Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (HHS-OIG) announced in a report that their efforts to pass laws that would prevent cloning of patient information and medical documentation have not been as successful has hoped. This typed of fraud is gradually growing and becoming more of a concern, as portrayed through the media. According to a statement released by the American Health Information Management Association, “Experts agree that this type of misuse of EHR technology features can compromise the integrity of the patient’s record, resulting in data provenance issues that put the trustworthiness of EHR data in question with potentially significant patient safety concerns---including legal and regulatory implications (Dougherty,