Ensuring Data Integrity in Electronic Health Records: A Quality Health Care Implication
This addresses data integrity issues in EHR systems to enhance quality and safety of patient care, but it appears incremental as it reviews and presents a method without claiming major breakthroughs.
The paper tackles the problem of preserving data integrity in Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, which is crucial for improving clinical administration and patient care, by reviewing its impact, analyzing three phases of data integrity, and presenting a method to preserve it, with evaluation based on a major clinical system in Australia.
An Electronic Health Record (EHR) system must enable efficient availability of meaningful, accurate and complete data to assist improved clinical administration through the development, implementation and optimisation of clinical pathways. Therefore data integrity is the driving force in EHR systems and is an essential aspect of service delivery at all levels. However, preserving data integrity in EHR systems has become a major problem because of its consequences in promoting high standards of patient care. In this paper, we review and address the impact of data integrity of the use of EHR system and its associated issues. We determine and analyse three phases of data integrity of an EHR system. Finally, we also present an appropriate method to preserve the integrity in EHR systems. To analyse and evaluate the data integrity, one of the major clinical systems in Australia is considered. This will demonstrate the impact on quality and safety of patient care.