Computer Vs Information Literacy in Healthcare, Essay Example

Information and information exchange is usually very essential in the delivery of care in all levels of health care. The patient, the health care, and the care team are all in need of computer literacy. Clinical information is essential as for the care to be well provided for, the physicians need to access the patients records, medical evidence and order provider guidance which is a process of health care (System, Reid, Compton, Grossman, & Fanjiang, 2005). The physicians may need to have full information on a patient by the preference, values, and relevant administrative information. To integrate this information stream, they might need the information and communication tools.

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The reason why the physicians cannot understand how to use the meaningful information like being able to go beyond the Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation is that the medical literacy is taught at medical school. Nevertheless, some new discoveries of technology and communication are not taught there, and the physicians might be required to have additional knowledge first (System, Reid, Compton, Grossman, & Fanjiang, 2005). Such modality is the use of EHR which is said to be the solution to the ongoing bankrupts in the hospital. The present EHR, however, do not have the privileged knowledge of medical information science and the backbone of modality. It only keeps assuring the inadequacy of the system if the users were more computer literate.

Electronic Health Records enable the hospital to store and retrieve detailed patient information that is to be used by the health providers and sometimes patients (Kim, Ohsfeldt, Gamm, Radcliff, & Jiang, 2016). Despite the electronic medical records, utility, the hospitals are very slow to adopt them since the maintenance cost and the startup to be significant barriers. The study indicates that not all the external reporting can be met by the HER since some combined data from multiple fields have to be generated.

Hospitals and eligible professionals need to have a successful demonstration of meaningful use of the EHRs to qualify for an incentive payment. Eligible professionals and hospitals must have meaningful certified EHRs so as to be eligible (Nir Menachemi, 2011). Improvement of projects like electronically capturing health information in a standardized format, electronic transmission of patient care and patient access to self-managerial tools should improve through the EHRs.

References

Kim, J., Ohsfeldt, R., Gamm, L., Radcliff, T., & Jiang, L. (2016). Hospital Characteristics are Associated With Readiness to Attain Stage 2 Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records. The Journal Of Rural Health. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jrh.12193

Nir Menachemi, T. (2011). Benefits and drawbacks of electronic health record systems. Risk Management And Healthcare Policy, 4, 47. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3270933/

System, N., Reid, P., Compton, W., Grossman, J., & Fanjiang, G. (2005). Information and Communications Systems: The Backbone of the Health Care Delivery System. National Academies Press (US). Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22862/