PATIENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Electronic patient management systems; are they worth all the effort and cost?

Abstract

Electronic Patient management system has been proved to be very beneficial for the healthcare sector but it also comes with the huge cost of implementation which is essential for its success. The purpose of this report is to assess the benefits of such central system and try to gauge if such system is really worth for such huge investment. After a brief discussion the current status on its presence in UK, the report tries to reach a meaningful conclusion.

Electronic patient management systems; are they worth all the effort and cost?

Introduction

Electronic patient management system is a new notion in the healthcare industry which has been inadvertently required for many years. It is also known as hospital management system, patients' electronic record system, and electronic personal health records, etc. Today the internet has enabled endless possibilities in the industry and the implementation of PMS in hospitals has been gaining momentum globally. In United Kingdom, it has been beneficial to not only patients and hospitals but also the physicians to retrieve the patient's history of treatment and review similar cases. At the same time, it has assisted the government in regulating and monitoring the health care sector and therefore easing the process which culminated into cost curtailment besides offering efficient system. Apart from UK, development of patient management system in USA has also been phenomenal and in reality, the country has been pioneer in the health care in many aspects. Ample research is available on the benefits of the information management system in general and hospital management systems in particular.

Objective

Electronic health record management system are representing the exercise of new technologies which comes with a very high initial cost to establish. The underlying discussion is based on the assessment of all benefits of health management systems against the high amount of investment required to implement it and will try to reach a meaningful conclusion.

Discussion

Definition

Electronic patient management systems are basically Internet-based software that permits hospitals, physicians and patients to produce, review, or preserve an electronic documentation of features of medical treatment provided to the patient (Flores, 2005). Electronic patient management systems are intended to assist patient's history, store, and electronically send out their check-up information to health care providers as well as hospitals (Brown, 2007). Some management systems let patients to store data stored by a person and present the aptitude to integrate medical data directly from hospitals, laboratories and physician practices.

Paper vs. Electronic Record

Every patient has a health record. Traditionally, patient records have been recorded no paper and possibly stored in a folder that includes patient related demographics, charts, laboratory results, notes, etc. patient health records are limited in how they can be used. For example, when reporting and audits are necessary, then individual retrieval from pages of paper records are necessary. Unsurprisingly, paper records often include illegible handwriting and it has also been noted that paper records suffer from incomplete and fragmented data and availability issues (Dick ...