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Home Health Informatics Case Study

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Home Health & Informatics
In 2014, there were 12,400 home health care agencies and in 2013, 4.9 million individuals received home healthcare (CDC, 2016). Home healthcare is provided to patients in their home, offering convenience and efficacy, while also costing less (Medicare.gov, 2017). Services provided include woundcare; patient/family/caregiver education; IV medications and hydration; and monitoring of conditions. As with most sectors of healthcare, home health can be improved using health informatics.

Health informatics can play an important role in care coordination, which is an important component of home care (Bates, 2015). Cost analyses have shown that the majority of healthcare costs happen in post-acute settings. Problems, …show more content…

A medical home is not a location, so much as it is a philosophy of care (AHRQ, 2017). The medical home provides: comprehensive care; patient-centered care; coordinated care; accessible services; and quality and safety. A medical home encompasses all components of a patient's health, including home health care, and allows for a smooth transition from setting to setting. Bates (2015) describes four important domains for EHR in care coordination: reconciling medications; tracking laboratory/test results; cross-setting communication; and facilitating interdisciplinary communication. Additionally, EMRs can be helpful in coordinating referrals and consultations. Across the board, EHRs are being underutilized for these purposes, though if used appropriately, they could revolutionize the healthcare system. Currently, EHRs still require a significant amount of leveraging and "high touch" human involvement, which reduces its usefulness. What this means in a home care setting is that essentially home care providers are acting in a knowledge vacuum. The information may be available in EMRs associated with specific hospitals or private practices, but it is not available to the home provider. Therefore, a home nurse is caring for a patient without all of the pertinent information needed for appropriate and safe care. If an EMR …show more content…

Zheng, et.al (2014) provided an overview of potential technologies, as well as possible uses for them. These wearable devices or devices that can be incorporated into an individual's environment can allow providers to monitor patients in their home setting. What is particularly elegant about these technologies is that patients do not need to be aware of them for them to be effective. This allows data to be collected while the patient is comfortable and acting naturally. For a patient with cognitive issues, technologies like this can allow for families and providers to monitor the patients without being intrusive. Often, home health care revolves around collecting data and these technologies can collect real-time data and transmit it to home health care providers or prime care providers. For example, sensors could be implanted in a client's bed to obtain ECG, photoplethysmographic (PPG) sensing (which uses light to measure multiple vital signs, such as SpO2), heart rate and blood pressure. Eye glasses can be designed that can complete PPG sensing over the bridge of the nose. To get even higher tech, tattoo biosensors can be used to measure lactate levels in human perspiration. This technology could be used on any patients, but they could be particularly useful for homebound seniors who either cannot come into offices for testing or who do not have the

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Our facility is after and EMR system that is overall easy to use, maintain and cost effective. After analyzing various EMR systems there are several key factors that emerge. In 2012 and then again in 2014, Medscape put together a report about what 18, 474 physicians liked and disliked about the top EHR systems (Kane, 2014). In regards to a long term care facility, a few of the EMR systems jumped to the top of the list as far as ease of use and cost to maintain. But let’s first talk about what is important to our facility.

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Enhanced IT that supports consumers, payers and providers via analytical tools and resources relieves financial and human capital burdens. Data collection and distribution empowers collaboration and coordination of care, regardless of where a patient receives treatment. End-to-end seamless integration connects facilitates faster registration, efficient referrals and consultations, results sharing and patient

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With telehealth platforms, healthcare providers can gather a wide range of patient data in real-time, just as if the patient is there in the office with them. Allowing patients to have this appointment from the comfort of their own homes is changing health care. This data includes chief complaints, medication adherence, and lifestyle information, which can be evaluated so that the healthcare professional can provide personalized care. Telehealth systems, while also being connected with Electronic Health Records (EHRs), make patient data centralized and easily accessible to multiple healthcare providers that are involved in the patient care. This connection helps improve care coordination, reduces unneeded information, and minimizes the chances of errors.

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In her assessment of the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act (ARRA), Murphy (2009) discusses how its enactment provided unprecedented funding for the advancement of health information technology (HIT) which served to promote health care reform. Electronic health records (EHRs) by extension received a boost via incentivization for appropriate use in hospitals and ambulatory settings (Murphy, 2009). The benefits of EHRs include the ability to improve the delivery and quality of nursing care, the ability to make more timely and efficient nursing care decisions for nursing, the ability to avoid errors that might harm patients and the ability to promote health and wellness for the patients (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). An appropriate use of EHR

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You need a system that can keep up with this ever changing world to give the patients the best care possible. There is new procedures, information, diseases, and advances in science on a daily basis and if you don 't have a system that can keep up with all of the changes, you can waste time and money along with the loss of patients. Patients need and deserve the best care possible and it 's up to the doctors to make that happen. Organization is going to be a key component in an EHR system as you need important information and fast in some instances and if you don 't have a well-organized system, it could mean life or death, in some situations.

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. Here is where I come in; graduating in 1998 from the title of a Medical Assistant II to State Certified, nurse and HHA nurse of 19 years. I have had the chance to operate multiple machines from the EKG heart monitor on down to the blood pressure cuff. However, people have been using devices in their homes for many years’ due to disorder like cardiovascular, respiratory, oral, gastrointestinal, and amputee’s have the independent security of using devices in their home.

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Many physicians believe that it is difficult to navigate through the systems. Providing in-services to properly train staff and physicians can go a long way with making the system easier to operate. Some say that entering data into the EMR takes your health professionals’ focus from the patient making the experience seem less personable so it takes away from the face to face interaction between the doctor and patient. The best way to combat this would be for the doctor to first sit and speak with the

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