Top EHR challenges for a travel nurse

A travel nurse and his or her expertise are integral to a patient's success, but as value-based care becomes more influential in the U.S. health care system, electronic health records will also fit into the care continuum. However, since EHRs have become widely adopted since the HITECH Act in 2009 and the subsequent meaningful use incentives, there have been some noted challenges along the way for nurses.

EHRs are here to stay
According to a recent data brief from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, around three-fourths of hospitals in the U.S. (76 percent) had adopted at least a basic EHR system by 2014, which represents an eight-fold increase since 2008. Additionally, evidence from the Kalorma Institute shows that the EHR and EMR market reached nearly $25 billion in 2014, so both the private and public health care sectors are on board with this technology. The ONC is also trying to optimize EHRs so that they can become interoperable, which means that many nurses will have to become familiar with this technology and communication portal.

However, it seems that the growing pains are already prevalent for many nurses when it comes to EHRs, and there's a good chance you might be one of them. According to a Q3 2014 Black Book EHR Loyalty Survey, 92 percent of nurses expressed dissatisfaction with EHRs

"Technology can help nurses do their jobs more effectively or it can be a highly intrusive burden on the hospital nurse delivering patient care," Doug Brown, managing partner of Black Book Market Research, explained in a press release associated with the survey findings. "Many compounding nurse productivity problems of can be sourced to the failure of those selecting and implementing an EHR to involve direct care nurses in the process."

In order to address these pain points and come up with solutions to solve them, here are some of the top EHR challenges you might have encountered when getting assigned to travel nursing jobs

Communication: The aforementioned survey showed that 94 percent of nurses cited lack of EHR communication between medical personnel as a concern with the software. Another 90 percent claimed that EHR communication between patients and nurses was also lackluster. Many of the nurses said that this was due to inconsistencies within the EHR software. Some of the biggest complaints were that there wasn't enough detail about the patient's history or a lack of medical notes. While many EHR companies are trying to resolve this with alerts, single-click access and interoperability, there is still some confusion with the way medical personnel communicates through these portals. 

Response time: Fewer than one-third of the respondents said that their internal IT departments or administrators responded in a prompt manner when issues or pain points in their EHR systems became apparent. In most cases, this leads to "workarounds," a source of frustration for nurses. Nearly 70 percent of the respondents stated that they had been instructed to use workarounds in their system's software. Not only does this increase stress for nurses, but it also presents roadblocks when nurses are trying to troubleshoot issues. 

The relationship to patient care: Perhaps the most alarming statistic from the survey was the fact that only 26 percent of nurses agreed with the statement: "As a nurse, I believe the current EHR at my organization improves the quality of patient information." While EHRs are designed to ultimately improve patient care, there exists opportunities to further improve the processes and protocols surrounding the use of the systems, which will impact the care continuum. 

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