According to Aziz and Abochar (2015), telemedicine and telenursing is provided in four ways: network programs, point-to-point connections, …show more content…
This technology may already be a common feature present in many hospitals however more facilities will be adopting e-prescribing including long-term and post-acute care facilities. Tolley (2012) has noted that physicians who use e-prescribing are seven times less likely to have a prescription error compared to hand-written prescription (p. 36; Kaushal et al., 2010). There are multiple occasions an error can occur from physician unreadable handwriting to muffled or misunderstood phone prescription orders. E-prescribing is beneficial by preventing transcription errors, dosing issues, and can be easily accessible on tablets, phones, as well as computers (Van Alstin, 2016, p. 7). However, with any new technology comes new errors. Selecting default medications or accidently selecting the wrong dosage are a few example of unintentional errors but can be reduced by creating a favorites link to commonly prescribed medications (Tolley, 2012, p. …show more content…
Electronic Health Records (EHR) is already being implemented through most facilities due to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Program, however on different platforms. Institutions with different platforms need to share clinical data and deliver seamless care to achieve high quality outcomes, instead of information hoarding (Van Alstin, 2015, p. 9). Health Information Exchange (HIE) is the electronic sharing of health-information between different organizations in hopes to eliminate errors during the transition of information from one facility to another (Johnson, n.d., p. 7). When majority of healthcare facilities use an integrated information system, this will allow for multiple trust agreements setting a path for more efficient and safer patient care. Challenges to integrated systems include having clear standards for exchanging data, effective management of patient information and transferring of data, implementation costs, training healthcare employees, additional privacy safeguards needed, and resistance organizations may present due to multiple changes (Johnson, n.d., p.