Impact of Electronic Health Records On Patient Outcomes

With the passing of the HITECH Act, EHRs have come into prominence and sharper focus, due to efforts by the government to push for a national adoption of EHRs into our healthcare system. This push for a national adoption of EHRs is based on the premise that it will help improve the quality delivery of health care services and reduce costs. However, this push for a “national adoption” has experienced mixed results. This study was designed to assess the impact of EHRs post-2009, the year of the HITECH Act, to review some of the key contributing factors to this mixed results. The findings of the study show that implementing EHRs has positively impacted the US health care system in a variety of ways. Thus, while we may conclude that the implementation EHRs have definitely improve the quality of healthcare in the US, and show great promise for the future of health care in this nation, there is still much work to be done to ensure that their full potential is realized. These findings will contribute towards the ongoing effort to expand the implementation of HER by making them secure and easy to use.