New Technology Interview Paper: Electronic Health Record

New Technology Interview Paper Name Institution New Technology Interview Paper Due to the pressures involved in dealing with a large number of patients and the responsibilities that come with it, there is a growing need to come up with a system that makes this process easy. These responsibilities include taking care of the payment models and care delivery methods for different patients. When physicians concentrate much on performing these administrative responsibilities, less time is spent caring for the patients. Therefore, to reduce this burden and improve direct patient care, technology is suggested as the means through which this can be achieved. By using technology, any hospital is capable of providing patient care that is both safe and of high quality. I interviewed nurse leader Mr. Kahana from John Hopkins hospital about a technology that they supervised and implemented. From the interview, it was gathered that Mr. Kahana led in planning for, supervising and even implementing the use of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology. When asked about what considerations the new system would take into account, Mr. Kahana noted that “privacy and security of patients` information will be ensured, and the care team trained.” In doing this, it will make the adaptation process very easy hence enabling the physicians, patients and the staff to reap from the benefits of implementing the new technology. The nurse leader also identified the benefits of adopting the EHR system both clinically, organizationally and on the society. Some of these as also echoed by Menachemi and Collum (2011) include, reducing medical errors, high quality care, easing operation, reducing the costs for patients and improving the overall health of the society. The truth of these facts is supported by the increased adoption of this technology by most hospitals especially in the UK. Next, Mr. Kahana gave an outline of what the implementation process entailed. The process took place in several types. On the first step, Kahana pointed out that “the implementation process of the EHR has to begin with creating a team. My team was made up of basically the caregivers including nurses, physicians, the administrative and compliance office staff, medical assistants and receptionists.” According to Hodgkins (2015), having a team is necessary in that it easier for hospital staff to teach each other on the skills of handling the EHR system. In addition, the implementation team can be notified in case any challenges that need addressing. The second step was configuring the software. Kahana ensured the security measures were taken care of by appropriately configuring the EHR using the help of a health IT vendor. Given the large population at John Hopkins hospital, Kahana also considered the hardware needs for the system. According to him, “an organization can save a lot in time and money if the hardware used is right.” In this regard, the EHR system by Kahana ensured less time was spent logging in and accessing information by availing laptops and tablets to every worker. After this, data was transferred from the old system to the new one. On this, Kahana noted, “since the data on the old system was large and or staff occupied most of the time, we agreed to hire temporary staff to help with the transfer of data.” In order to ensure that all critical information was transferred, a checklist was made. Moreover, the room layout was also considered as part of the implementation process to e...