Posted: March 28th, 2021

The Assignment: (1 page) Create a 1-page fact sheet that your healthcare organization could hypothetically use to explain the health or nursing informatics

As a professional nurse, you are expected to apply your expertise to patient care. On occasion, you will also be expected to share that expertise.

With evolving technology and continuous changes to regulations designed to keep up these changes, there is usually a need to share information and expertise to inform colleagues, leadership, patients, and other stakeholders.

In this Assignment, you will study a recent nursing informatics-related healthcare policy, and you will share the relevant details via a fact sheet designed to inform and educate.

To Prepare:
•Review the Resources on healthcare policy and regulatory/legislative topics related to health and nursing informatics.
•Consider the role of the nurse informaticist in relation to a healthcare organization’s compliance with various policies and regulations, such as the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA).
•Research and select one health or nursing informatics policy (within the past 5 years) or regulation for further study.

The Assignment: (1 page)

Create a 1-page fact sheet that your healthcare organization could hypothetically use to explain the health or nursing informatics policy/regulation you selected. Your fact sheet should address the following:
•Briefly and generally explain the policy or regulation you selected.
•Address the impact of the policy or regulation you selected on system implementation.
•Address the impact of the policy or regulation you selected on clinical care, patient/provider interactions, and workflow.
•Highlight organizational policies and procedures that are/will be in place at your healthcare organization to address the policy or regulation you selected. Be specific.

Sample Answer:

Electronic Health Records
• Electronic Health Records (EHR) is a digital patient’s paper chart that is shared across multiple agencies in real-time. The records are shared securely among authorized users. They provide the medical history of a patient and evidence-based healthcare tools (Ben-Assuli, 2015). The policy is meant to automate the records for easier workflow in a healthcare facility.
• Electronic Health Records have an impact on system implementation since they transform the quality of services. The systems are automated making them available any time (Bayer, Santelli & Klitzman, 2015). Additionally, the systems are secure from damage compared to the paper records (Sampaio et al., 2018). Patients can access all their records from any part of the country.
• The digital records enhance clinical care since they eliminate errors that occur due to lack of appropriate information on the patient’s history. They enhance the interactions since a healthcare provider can easily know how to engage a patient based on their medical history (L’Heureux, 2016). Additionally, the automated systems enhance the workflow since nurses do not carry physical files but easily access them on computers. Therefore, it leads to enhanced workflow (Colligan, Potts, Finn & Sinkin, 2015). The digital records are important since they help specialists to improve on the quality of the treatment and efficient prevention of diseases.
• The implementation of Electronic Health Records requires an organization to customize its policies. One of the policies is to define authorized access and identify the people with authorized access. My organization will need a policy on how to share information across different agencies or specialists. It is also important to stipulate how the information will be protected from unauthorized access.

References
Bayer, R., Santelli, J., & Klitzman, R. (2015). New challenges for electronic health records: confidentiality and access to sensitive health information about parents and adolescents. Jama, 313(1), 29-30.
Ben-Assuli, O. (2015). Electronic health records, adoption, quality of care, legal and privacy issues and their implementation in emergency departments. Health policy, 119(3), 287-297.
Colligan, L., Potts, H. W., Finn, C. T., & Sinkin, R. A. (2015). Cognitive workload changes for nurses transitioning from a legacy system with paper documentation to a commercial electronic health record. International journal of medical informatics, 84(7), 469-476.
L’Heureux, N. J. (2016). Optimizing Electronic Health Record Use for Management of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Primary Care.
Sampaio, P. C. T., Moraes, P. D. C., Garcia, F. D. M., Bossonaro, J., De Araùjo, V. C., Junqueira, J. L. C., & Montalli, V. A. M. (2018). Development of Electronic Health Record system for a stomatology clinic. Oral surgery, oral medicine, oral pathology, and oral radiology, 126(3), e167.