Course Project Task 2 Using the SWOT you did in Week 3 , select an area of improvement in the healthcare setting. You will do a root cause analysis (RCA) for this area this week. Go to the Web site...

Running Head: COURSE PROJECT TASK 2 (W4:A2)
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Electronic Health Records
Running Head: COURSE PROJECT TASK 2 (W4:A2)
Course Project Task 2 (W4:A2)
Name
Institution
Patient-centred Medical Home Model (PCMH)
Given the rigorous changes that take place in the healthcare industry, there have been difficulties in adopting patient-centred medical home model (PCMH). PCMH refers to a model that em
aces the objectives of the Institute of Medicine, the Wagner Care Model and the plan of the Future Family Medicine model. PCMH offers an opportunity for allying patient and physician frustration improving health care, public and private payment system resulting in intense transformation in the health care system. Often, primary care physicians have built relationships with different health care personnel required to provide health care. However, there has been limited support to establish these interactions to
ing about optimal health care outcomes. For a team to function well, coherent set of skills is required from each member to meet the set objectives (Graham, 2007).
To solve this problem, health centres need to adopt electronic health records (EHR) that keeps information of patients resulting from one or more encounters in any setting that offers health services. The information contains patients’ progress notes, demographics, problems and vital signs, medications, past medical history, laboratory data, immunizations and radiology reports. EHR computerises and simplifies directly or indirectly, the clinician’s workflow since it is capable of generating a complete clinical encounter of a patient and other activities related to health care. These activities include quality management, evidence oriented decision support, and outcomes reports (Atherton, 2011).
Implementation of electronic health care records provides a number of benefits to both clinicians and patients. The adoption of EHR improve patients’ outcomes, transforms the provision of patient care, and enhance patient safety through minimising medical mistakes as well as preventing unnecessary surgical procedures. In addition, this technology minimise health disparities, lessen drug prescription e
ors and offer considerable cost savings through cutting down on lavish spending (Bowens, Jones & Frye, 2010).
Workflow Process for EHR
Clinical Workflow Process
    Administrative
    Clinical
    
Schedule appointments
Document patient information
Retrieve and store patient medical records
Process billing and claims
Communication
    
Medical treatment (triage)
Record patient history
Examine and assess patients
Develop treatment plans
Provide patient education
Prescribe medication
Order procedures (e.g., vaccinations, x-rays,) and lab tests
Clinical follow-up with patients
Figure 1: Clinical Workflow Process
Source: (Jason & Adele, 2005)
Clinical workflow covers an extensive range of tasks as shown above. The workflow provides a necessary condition for successful implementation of health information technology in health care centres. For effective application of HER technologies, their implementation needs to result in minimal meddling with clinical workflow process. Clinicians therefore need to address underlying issues that may obstruct workflow process before, during and after its implementation. Such issues include difficulty in choosing the variety of HER...