Factors Involved in the Successful Transition to and Subsequent use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) Systems by Individual and Group-Practice Physicians

摘要

The use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) by healthcare professionals has been recommended as a way of improving healthcare quality, patient safety, and workflow efficiency, and lowering costs in the long run. While large hospital systems integrate EHRs into their services, individual and group practice-owning physicians, especially those of specialties and subspecialties, are often left wondering whether they should follow the trend and whether the transition from traditional, paper-chart systems or older EHRs to newer, commercial ones will truly benefit their patients and their practice as a whole. These physicians also often wonder whether benefits such as electronic-prescribing, clinical decision support, and patient results tracking outweigh obstacles such as initial costs, reliability, and user adaptability. This investigation sought to provide a more informed perspective in considering the decision to either transition to an Electronic Health Records system or maintain a traditional paper-chart style system. A number of studies examining care quality improvement and physician satisfaction in regards to transitions to EHRs under various conditions, such as specialty type, previous EHR-experience, and difficulty of transition, among others, were investigated to form this perspective. The improvement of care quality and physician satisfaction as a result of adopting EHRs relies heavily on both the efficiency and completeness of the transition and the EHRu27s degree of customization towards a practice’s specific needs. Since EHRs are continuously being developed and improved, the transition to an EHR system and its subsequent use can be successful with proper preparation for the transition, extended clinician training, and choosing one that is well-tailored to the needs of the specialty and its patients’ medical conditions.