Electronic Health Records (EHR) is a modern computerized system where patients have to complete a particular health record form that can be viewed by other health care providers in any place (Amster et al., 2014). EHR is essential in sharing of patients’ information in institutions such as pharmacies, hospitals, and doctors’ offices. Furukawa et al. (2014) state that by sharing such information, patients’ data can be easily traced without a need for undergoing other tests that are not only time consuming but also expensive for patients. Therefore, the technological advancement of utilizing EHR is a vital step in the improvement of health care. The essence of this essay is to explore different sets of EHR, their differences, and similarities and how they provide an equilibrium between a point of care requirements and granularity.
The first EHR set is CPT which is a set that describes surgical, medical and diagnostic procedures which are under the American Medical Association (AMA) (Furukawa et al., 2014). Similar to other technological fields, there have been some changes which are aimed at making more improvements in health care and preservation of such improvements. Some categories such as measurement of performance which aim at keeping track of test results and services have been developed (Amster et al., 2014). Another added category is emerging technology which aims at collecting patients’ data and assessing of procedures which are already in use.
Another category which is updated annually by the National Center for Health Statistics and content management system is ICD-9-CM. This form of system is utilized in the diagnosis of procedures in both outpatient and inpatient services (Amster et al., 2014). In addition to this, the system is used in medical research with an intent of improving the quality of health care. Therefore, the system is not only of relevance to inpatient and outpatient purposes but also for the provision of statistics which are vital in research.
Another set of EHR is referred to ICD-10-CM. It is a system which is used by the US as a clinical modification of EHR set named IDC-9-CM which was deemed obsolete (Rubenstein et al., 2015). Therefore, it serves as an advancement of the previous system. This instance depicts the gradual improvement on improving codes to suit the demands in health care industry. Amster et al. (2014) posit that to provide a more enhanced health care, there is a need to regularly update the present systems to come up with code volumes that can provide more accurate information. ICD-10-PCS is a system which is used in classifying diseases. By classifying diseases, identification of diseases affecting particular community in relation to the already classified diseases is made easier. Moreover, this system improves in modern medical research. Other roles played by this code are, to keep track of patients’ history, making payment and making a medical decision.
Contrary to the three previously defined codes, data provided by ICD-10-PCS can be more accurate because the system accommodates many functions. ICD-10-PCS is different from other EHR codes because it has more code sets hence can be used globally (Rubenstein et al., 2015). The EHR codes share a similarity of having one major functionality which is making it easy to retrieve data for medical purposes. As such, the reason behind formulation of these code sets was to make it easy to share data and information between different health facilities. EHR code sets are expected to provide an equilibrium between point of care requirements and granularity because utilization of new codes need more involvement from a larger workforce. As such, physicians and health care service providers in both United States and the entire world will be necessitated to involve deeply in provision of enhanced patient data information for development of new codes.
References
Amster, A., Jentzsch, J., Pasupuleti, H., & Subramanian, K. G. (2014). Completeness, accuracy, and computability of National Quality Forum-specified eMeasures. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 22(2), 409-416.
Furukawa, M. F., King, J., Patel, V., Hsiao, C. J., Adler-Milstein, J., & Jha, A. K. (2014). Despite substantial progress in EHR adoption, health information exchange and patient engagement remain low in office settings. Health Affairs, 2(1), 10-1377.
Rubenstein, J. N., Painter, M. R., Painter, M., Schoor, R., & Baum, N. (2015). The four questions to ask and answer regarding ICD-10: Second of a 2-part series. Urology Practice, 2(2), 65-68.
