Kendall’s Electronic Health Information System
In alignment with the need for keeping medical errors at bay, the adoption of electronic health information systems had prompted the development of various applications to aid in the achievement of this cause. Meditech is one such application that is used in the Kendall regional medical center to ensure that Kendall can provide health care services that integrate state-of-the-art technological solutions (Meditech, 2016). The interface of Meditech looks as shown below:
This technology ensures that all healthcare providers can access information across the continuum by striving to conform to the already laid down healthcare information standards.
Firstly, Meditech adopts an interoperability approach that enables healthcare givers to access information from any operation point of Kendall’s regional medical center. Interoperability is meant to have a patient-centered approach due to the changing scenario in delivery of health care from a hospital-based center to the patient’s environment, which is lacking (Barbarito et al., 2012).
Meditech meets the organization’s goals for promoting population health because it has tools that enable Kendall’s center to check its clinical and financial progress. Promoting population health is one objective of Kendall’s regional center, and this is achieved by evaluating the center’s contributing to this national cause by checking its performance indicators, which can be easily transmitted. Nonetheless, Meditech is yet to encompass a platform through which can be easily made within the application’s interface in a manner that guarantees the safety and security of the data.
Meditech embraces the collaboration of the different stakeholders involved in the provision of health. On a different note, the element of patient privacy, which is an integral part of ensuring patient safety, has not been adequately addressed. As is apparent from the interface above, the use of this hospital system utilizes a login and logout system that requires a password. This allows only authorized individuals to access patients’ information and data. This does not guarantee the security and safety of patients’ data as discussed by (Fernandez-Aleman, Senor, Lozoya, & Toval, 2013); hence, the organization looks forwards to embracing new advances in technology as Meditech works towards achieving this cause.
Therefore, every healthcare provider is obliged to ensure that he or she does not leave his or her portal running after leaving his or her workstation. Also, the healthcare professional is not allowed to give his or her username and password to another individual because he or she will be answerable to any action occurring with his or her identification code. A nurse administrator can make appropriate decisions even at real-time scenarios using Meditech as follows:
- Logging into the hospital’s system in real-time
- Going through the status board which acts as a surveillance tool and easily highlights red flags, for example, abnormal results
- Review patient data, graphs, test results, flowsheets
- Identifying risk factors or misses
- Communicating with colleagues regarding identified issues
- Making informed decisions
Kendall can boast of its interoperability within all its centers as it awaits an advanced approach that will enable Kendall to share healthcare information with other healthcare institutions as shown in the figure that follows. Furukawa, Patel, Charles, Swain, and Mostashari (2013) shows that the expansion of health information exchange systems currently entails regional health organizations because, at the end of the day, patient’s health rather than customer loyalty is more essential.
As an organization, Kendall is working to ensure patient confidentiality, which is yet to be well developed, is upheld with everyone’s sense of responsibility and lack of disclosure of pertinent information.
References
Barbarito, F., Pinciroli, F., Mason, J., Marceglia, S., Mazzola, L., & Bonacina, S. (2012). Implementing standards for the interoperability among healthcare providers in the public regionalized Healthcare Information System of the Lombardy Region. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 45(4),736-745.
Fernandez-Aleman, J., Senor, I. C., Lozoya, P. A., & Toval, A.(2013). Security and privacy in electronic health records: A systematic literature review. Journal of biomedical informatics, 46(3), 541-562.
Furukawa, M. F., Patel, V., Charles, D., Swain, M., & Mostashari, F. (2013). Hospital electronic health information exchange grew substantially in 2008- 2012. Health Affairs, 32(8), 1346-1354.
Meditech. (2016).