Leveraging Electronic Health Records (EHR) for Enhanced Patient Care

This study analyzes how electronic health records (EHR) can be utilized to enhance patient care. The objectives of the study are to; design predictive models to recognize patients are risk of developing some specific conditions; evaluate the effect of EHR systems on patient care outcomes; ascertain the impact of EHR systems on physicians’ work; and develop a framework for incorporating EHR analysis into hospital systems, thus enabling real-time decision-making by healthcare specialists. This study adopts a qualitative research using semi-structured interviews, which was directed to physicians who had at least a year experience at Primary Health Care Centres (PHCs) to gather information about the current content and scope of Electronic Health Record Systems. Most of the respondents interviewed said that the health information system’s adaptation and the availability of Electronic Health Records influenced encounters for patients positively in their PHCs. They talked about the many benefits of EHR in terms of effectiveness, which include the availability of patient information and accuracy of patient documentation; these are often hard to find in their paper documents. The interviewees also indicated that EHRs allow eprescribe of medication, which is a huge plus to the old system of prescribing and administering medicine to patients. The physicians stressed the need for private clinics and primary healthcare centres to share and link their systems to enhance the functionality of the EHR. The study recommends that; there is need for the PHC EHR system to integrate across other government and private institutions. There is also a need for increased capacity to support patients with physical activity and nutrition.