Discussion – Role of Informatics in Patient Care Outcomes
Post a total of 3 substantive responses full participation. This includes your initial post and 2 replies to other students or myself.
Review the presentation from the American Medical Informatics Association about linking informatics strategies to patient outcomes.
First part
Respond to the following in a minimum of 190 to 250 words:
How does standardized data entry relate to improving patient safety and improved care outcomes?
The information in the AMIA presentation is from 2014. How has meaningful use changed since its creation?
Provide examples from your own clinical practice, current events, or industry journals.
Role of Information and Data Management in Improving Patient Care
Health care delivery evolves as patient needs increase. To respond effectively to the increasing care demands, health care providers continue to integrate informatics into the health practice. This integration has intensified the use of technology and data, albeit with a significant increase in security and privacy risks (Alexander et al., 2019). The purpose of this reflection is to explore the role of informatics in patient care and how to improve health care information systems in the current organization.
Role of Informatics in Patient Care
Standardized Data Entry and Care Outcomes
Regardless of their specialties, nurses should embrace technology in care. A critical part of this role entails collecting, analyzing, and applying data to optimize patient outcomes. In clinical practice, data comes from multiple sources and provide varying health information. Common data sources include databases and cloud storage. Grannis et al. (2019) demonstrated data standardization as converting raw and complex data into a common format that allows users to process and analyze it. Its importance in health care delivery cannot be underestimated since safe and effective care requires health care practitioners to use uniform data.
Patient safety is characterized by error-free and timely care. As Grannis et al. (2019) highlighted, data standardization helps health care practitioners establish clear and consistent attributes of the problem they are addressing. For instance, standardized data on a pandemic helps clinicians to establish the trends, severity, vulnerability, and other critical elements that facilitate informed decision-making. Quality patient care depends on data accuracy. Typically, inaccurate data increases medication errors, which reduces the overall care quality. Standardization improves accuracy and helps health care professionals quickly access current and relevant information. Such access improves data analysis and reduces the time taken before a patient receives medical attention. Generally, the consistency in data formats and labels facilitates the effective and efficient use of medical data to promote patient safety and achieve high care quality.
Meaningful Use Changes since Its Creation
Meaningful use is founded on the principle that technology and information systems should improve patient outcomes. The AMIA presentation demonstrates meaningful use as the building block to improved delivery and outcomes by utilizing technology, access to information, and health care transformation. As Alammari et al. (2021) highlighted, meaningful use started as a project for incentivizing health care providers depending on their integration and use of electronic health records. Like many other health care aspects, much has changed since the creation of meaningful use. The motivation is no longer primarily about incentivizing providers patients play a critical role in promoting meaningful use.
Regarding the objectives of meaningful use in the current practice, health care professionals embrace the comprehensive use of EHRs to achieve value-based care. As a result, the motivation for technology integration in care and utilizing EHR systems that promote meaningful use is to improve overall patient care and increase the probability of reporting clinical benefits (Alammari et al., 2021). Such care outcomes are achieved with minimal errors and collaborative, timely, and patient-centered care. Patients promote meaningful use through data provision and effective use of decision-support systems. They do so by providing alerts to health care professionals and playing a collaborative role in illness management through EHRs.
Changes in health care delivery are inevitable as the health practice advances. Data sharing will intensify hence the need for data standardization and secure, interoperable systems. Data standardization ensures that clinicians can understand data and analyze observable patterns. Meaningful use ensures that health data and technologies are used to promote patient outcomes in the advancing clinical practice. Significant changes have occurred since the inception of meaningful use, and more changes are expected as EHRs integration into patient care intensifies.
Second part
Reply to at least 2 of your classmates or me. Be constructive and professional in your responses.
This week reading:
Handbook of Informatics for Nurses & Healthcare Professionals, Ch. 1: An Overview of Informatics in Healthcare
Read Ch. 1, An Overview of Informatics in Healthcare, in the Handbook of Informatics for Nurses & Healthcare Professionals.
Hebda, T. L., Czar, P., & Hunter, K. (2018). Handbook of informatics for nurses & healthcare professionals, 6/e (6th ed.). Pearson Education.
Aathi, M. K., (2014). Nursing informatics: The emerging field. Asian Journal of Nursing Education & Research, 4(1), 127-130.
Bowles, K. H., Dykes, P., & Demiris, G., (2015). The use of health information technology to improve care and outcomes for older adults. Research in Gerontological Nursing, 8(1), 5-10.
McGonigle, D., Hunter, K., Sipes, C., et al., (2014). Why nurses need to understand nursing informatics: Everyday informatics. Association of Operating Room Nurses. AORN, 100(3), 324-327.
Piscotty Jr., R. J., Kalisch, B., & Gracey-Thomas, A. (2015). Impact of healthcare information technology on nursing practice. Image – Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 47(4), 287-293.
Sensmeier, J., (2011). Transforming nursing practice through technology and informatics. Nursing Management, 42(11), 20-23.’
ANSWER
The patient outcome has improved over time, primarily from the quality of data. Patient data are the source of evidence in research. Modern healthcare has emphases on evidence-based practice (EBP) as the critical pillows of quality. Proper data entry leads to the correct alignment of the resources to the need. It is the reason that AMIA has pinpointed the essence of integrity in documentations, as clear documentation is a benchmark for improving patient participation. The trends in healthcare require optimal patient involvement for recovery. AMIA provided guidelines for patient safety. Informatics was the paramount factor that could potentially improve the delivery and efficiency of healthcare. Since the implementation of the HITECH Act, healthcare has transformed to embrace informatics. The advancement aims at reducing patient harm, using the evidence rightly and properly-documented patient satisfaction. As of 2014, the healthcare system had embraced electronic health records (EHR) for communication, trends, and store entries. Besides, meaningful use required the protection of patient records from wrong access and utilization. Now, the demands of healthcare have significantly changed. For instance, the adversity of Covid 19 requires a resilient health system. Coupled with the high cost of care and overcrowding, it was not feasible to meet all the demands. Instantly, healthcare has introduced telehealth for the virtual interaction between patients and providers. The move is cost-effective since it has cut down on travel and appointment costs (Loeb et al. 2020). The nurses and other providers readily embraced the approach at my workplace since it reduced burnouts and stress. Many patients also were satisfied with these feasible platforms. Besides, patient data privacy continues to tighten with more laws and restrictions. Of late, California Consumer Protection Act was enacted, which formulated more rules on access to patients’ data. Other technological innovations are solving problems in regular care. For instance, Fu et al. (2018) affirm that cloud computing is a new way to store data in internet servers. Healthcare can store a large volume of information at low costs. It is also easy to share information through the internet, and users can access it remotely.
Fu, J. S., Liu, Y., Chao, H. C., Bhargava, B. K., & Zhang, Z. J. (2018). Secure data storage and searching for industrial IoT by integrating fog computing and cloud computing. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 14(10), 4519-4528. https://doi. 10.1109/TII.2018.2793350
Loeb, A. E., Rao, S. S., Ficke, J. R., Morris, C. D., Riley III, L. H., & Levin, A. S. (2020). Departmental experience and lessons learned with the accelerated introduction of telemedicine during the COVID-19 crisis. The Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. https://doi. 10.5435/JAAOS-D-20-00380
