Risks Associated with Electronic Health Records
While on the whole, electronic health records (EHRs) are a strong positive for the healthcare industry, and associated with better outcomes, that does not mean they are without risks and drawbacks. For example, there are still security risks associated with EHRs, but the risks are different than the security risks associated with paper records. Cybersecurity is a class unto itself – risks often come as the result of poor password hygiene, but there are other ways for a hacker to get access to health records as well. Poor password hygiene is human error, which when combined with active attempts to gain access to secure health records, leads to a variety of risks including legal ones (Raposo, 2015).
In addition to risks, there are drawbacks. First, because of the need to comply with HIPAA, there are only so many systems for managing EHRs, and these tend to be quite expensive. The increased cost burden, especially for small practices, can be extraordinary, running into six figures (Fleming, et al, 2011).
Furthermore, the major shift in technology that EHRs represent can create problems for the people who work in health care. There is typically an extensive amount of...
The reality is that a lot of medicine is practiced by baby boomers, new immigrants, administrators without much formal education, people who barely know how to use Facebook – these are not millennials from Silicon Valley. The learning curve for the people who need to become experts quickly is actually very slow and painful. There is often substantial resistance to the implementation of the new technology. The benefits of EHRs mainly accrue when they are implemented well and adopted enthusiastically, but the conditions for this may not exist in all health care facilities.
Management
The relevant range is the range at which the data has statistical significance. Some activities are bound by a minimum and maximum amount (Accounting Tools, 2018). When something falls outside of the relevant range, that is basically an outlier that should be investigated, as it might mean a measurement problem, or something else. In the management context, the relevant range is typically related to budgeting, but the concept can really be applied to anything that has a range, like blood pressure would be…
