NURS 8210 Week 6 Assignment: Meaningful Use Paper

Week 6 Assignment: Meaningful Use Paper

Why are many health care organizations hesitant to adopt electronic health records (EHR) when they have the potential to improve quality, increase access, and reduce costs? Some organizations are concerned with the ethical and legal issues that may arise in daily operations. In 2010, legislators noticed health care’s reluctant transition into full EHR integration, and began to provide financial incentives to those organizations that not only adopt EHRs, but also use them meaningfully to improve quality of patient care. As an advanced practice nurse, it is important to be aware of the challenges, policies, and incentives associated with integrating EHR systems. It is also critical that you understand the concept of “meaningful use” and how it plays out in today’s health care organizations.

To prepare:

In this Application Assignment, you analyze meaningful use criteria to determine the authentic legal, financial, and ethical issues that may surround it.

  • Reflect on the information presented in the Learning Resources, focusing on meaningful use legislation and the “Ethics in Nursing Informatics” section of your course text.
  • Investigate the legal, financial, and ethical issues surrounding meaningful use.
  • Ask yourself: What are the goals of meaningful use?

By Day 7 of Week 6

Write a 4- to 5-page essay in which you:

  • Summarize the legal, financial, and ethical issues that may arise as a result of meaningful use legislation.
  • Explain how these issues might present barriers to successful implementation within an organization.
  • Discuss ways that health care organizations can make the most of their electronic health record investments in light of meaningful use.
  • Explain how EHR-related meaningful use legislation is being implemented in your organization.
Grading Criteria

Document: Week 6 Application 2 Rubric (Word document)

When information was passed from person to person directly or written in one area, it was much easier to control the accessibility of vulnerable information (Croll, 2010).  Today, we see that HIT provides us with many benefits but also adds some concerns around confidentiality, privacy, and ethical considerations. HIPPA supports the privacy and security by providing standards in practice, it is important for nurses to not only ensure we keep abreast of new and upcoming initiatives, but also become a leader in the development of these policies for public protection of health information (Hjort, 2007). When using EHR’s there are four ethical consideration including privacy and confidentiality, security breaches, systems implementation, and data inaccuracies (Ozair et al., 2015). One ethical consideration I face is the sharing of sensitive data to co-workers.  It is important that only authorized people access the data, but I find that working in a small hospital, information seems to be shared more freely.  Nurses often leave themselves logged into computers with open data easily seen.  This presents a security breech as well as a privacy concern.

AMIA developed a code of professional and ethical conduct in 2007 and more currently updated in 2018.  As professionals we have a responsibility to understand our role and responsibility when it comes to HIT and confidentiality of patient’s sensitive information, if there is an issue such as my experience with leaving computer access open and unattended, we need to advise colleagues of appropriate action.  We can also reach out to leadership teams to see if the system could help alleviate this concern by potentially setting a specific amount of time with no activity where log out is automatic.  Another issue is we have two large screen computers in the hallway. We access medical records and view chest x-rays as families and patients are walking by.  These workstations could be placed in a more confidential area.

 

As technology continues to advance so will the need of policies to continue to support our ethical responsibilities to protect public privacy (Hjort, 2007). Hopefully as HIT grows, the knowledge and expertise of utilizing these tools becomes more standardized for nurses. Utilizing the AMIA code for professional and ethical guidelines that tells us to continually upgrade our education HIT, recognize the limitations and seek solutions, support learners and provide a culture of including others to enhance professional conduct (Petersen et al., 2018).

 

 

 

Reference

Croll, P. (2010). Privacy, security and access with sensitive health information. Studies in Health

 

Technology and Informatics, 151, 167–175.

Hjort, B. (2007). AHIMA Report addresses evolving role of health care privacy and security

 

officers. Journal of Health Care Compliance, 9(3), 47–68.

 

Ozair, F.F., Jamshed, N., Sharma, A., & Aggarwal, P. (2015) Ethical issues in electronic health

 

records: A general overview.  Perspectives in Clinical Research, 6(2), 73-76.

 

doi: 10.4103/2229-3485.153997

Peterson, C., Berner, E.S., Embi, P.J., Fultz Hollis, K., Goodman, K.W., Koppel, R., Lehmann,

 

C.U., Maulden, S.A., McGregor, K.A., Solomonides, A., Subbian, V., Terrazas, E., &

 

Winlekstein, P. (2018). AMIA’s cod of professional and ethical conduct 2018. Journal of

 

American Medical Informatics Association, 25(11), 1579-1582.

 

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