Leadership vision: to have ehr (electronic health records) at 90% of healthcare facilities in u.s.by 2015

LEADERSHIP VISION: TO HAVE EHR (ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS) AT 90% OF HEALTHCARE FACILITIES IN U. S. BY (19 July LEADERSHIP VISION: TO HAVEEHR (ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS) AT 90% OF HEALTHCARE FACILITIES IN U. S. BY 2015 There is a revolution in the healthcare facilities in United States and around the world especially in maintaining records. Today medical records do not need paper and pen, but a computer where the entire medical history of a person can be stored from birth till death. Though the adaptation of this technology is incorporated into the healthcare facilities, there is a need to train the healthcare faculty especially the nursing community to use these technologies. My vision in nursing leadership is the use of technology especially the Electronic Health Records (EHR) by the year 2015 and the healthcare sector in US can show a tremendous growth. The efforts to achieve this goal need to be worked out and the nursing community plays a major role in achieving this goal. At this point of time it becomes essential to understand the terms Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Electronic Patient Record (EPR). “ EPR refers to a documentation of periodic care, held by a single provider concerning a single person and is patient centred” (Martin, et al., 2008), while EHR refers to the fully incorporated documentations of the patient’s whole medical past and involve electronic collection of patient’s health and health care – from birth to death. In order to have change in the health sector the EHR need to be incorporated into nursing practice in education and health care systems. EHR merge information from diverse care settings held in different systems and in some cases aggregates the information and display them as a single record. Future patient record systems must support patient’s healthcare, assist to advance its value, have an impact to get better efficiency of healthcare personnel and reduce expenditure. Achieving this goal is possible with transformational leadership for new nurses as it encourages change and there is a need for the dynamic healthcare system of the 21st century. It may be noted that the lack of proper leadership has increased and influenced the shortage of nurses. The shortage of nursing staff is a major problem faced by the healthcare industry in United States. This not only increases the stress on the existing staff but also leads to problems such as medication errors, diagnostic errors, health challenges, job burnout and dissatisfaction. This in turn compromises on the patient safety. Computerization and information technologies are in turn going to improve the nursing practice as well as aid in patient education. It may also help to ease the stress on the existing staff, reduce medication errors and increase retention. Nursing education is also using this advanced technology to train the new nurses and is encouraging the use of mobile computers in the hospital settings. Nurses being the patient educator, the use of advanced technology can help them to attain success in this field. The use of these technologies helps in storing vast amount of data efficiently. Today, in most of the hospitals the records have less information and most of it is stored in computers which is a total different situation from 80s and 90s. It is often seen nurses in the hospital work with mobile computers in the patients’ room. Therefore, recent years have seen several advancement using latest technologies. Among the healthcare sector there is an obvious competition to provide customers with the best value. According to the existing estimates, approximately 15% of GDP is spent on healthcare alone in the United States, which is the highest in the world (WHO, 2006). It is quite evident that the use of computer and information technologies in the healthcare increase at a faster rate and this is in turn going to improve the nursing education as well as practice. Use of computerized charting system can help the nurses in managing the data. It is only with effective nursing leadership that nursing practice and effective health care policies can be shaped and influenced in future (Antrobus and Kitson, 1999). Researchers have identified the need for transformational leadership in the healthcare industry. Transformational leadership is especially helpful for new nurses and is an encouragement for them as this leadership helps to bring about change that fits into the exceptionally dynamic system of healthcare. In fact it can be noted that it is easy for new nurses to identify and compare the new and old policies, procedures, and case histories and provide suggestions of improvement with the use of technology such as EHR. Sofarelli and Brown (1998) favour the transformational leadership style and find it empowering. An EHR must be developed in such a way that it should keep all information electronically concerning health condition and healthcare of a person’s life period and should have the capability to replace paper based health records as the basic evidence in a way that satisfies all medical, lawful and organizational requirements. Presently the use of EHR is a lawful requirement in USA and a number of European countries. In summary the advantages of EHR/EPR are well recognized. It can be said that the achievement of the vision of EHR by the year 2015 in almost 90 % of healthcare facilities in US can only be achieved by the focus on educating the healthcare faculty particularly the nurses for setting up this system. The healthcare employees need to be qualified for this alteration in the system and related schools/colleges need to accommodate EHR curriculum to organize the next generation of healthcare workforce. The outcome of this achievement can result in advantages such as patients have more option and less waiting time, the physician save time and can instantly access data on past record, hence making sure safe, competent, reliable and incessant healthcare for the patients. Health organization save time and funds by stream lining the system, avoiding duplicate instruction and stopping of pilferage of medicine. References Antrobus, S. and Kitson, A., (1999). Nursing Leadership: Influencing and shaping health policy and nursing practice. Journal of Advanced Nursing. 29 (3) 746-753. Martin D, Mariani J, Rouncefield M. (2008) Implementing an EPR Project: Everyday Features and Practicalities of NHS Project Work. Retrieved from www. dirc. org. uk/publications/inproceedings/papers/91. pdf Sofarelli M.. & Brown, R. (1998). The need for nursing leadership in uncertain times. Journal of Nursing Management, 6(4), 201-207. World Health Organization (WHO), (2006) Working Together for Health, Retrieved from http://www. who. int/whr/2006/whr06_en. pdf