Legal Issues with the Electronic Health Record

Introduction The purpose of this paper is to make readers aware of the legal issues in the electronic health record (EHR) and the risks involved so they can be prepared. It is also to help provide solution to those who are already dealing with the risks. The goal of this Project is to reach out to health care facilities who are about to embark on a new chapter in health care that we call, the EHR. Everyone should know the risks of a product before purchasing and that is what my research will show. Method I used The Journal of American Health Information Management Association as a primary search engine for articles. I also used PubMed which comprises more than 23 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books, and the Journal of American Medical Association. Results From doing the research, I have found that there are not as many legal issues within the electronic health record that most people think. According to an article in the Journal of American Medical Association, one research letter published online in Archives of Internal Medicine found that the rate of liability claims when EHRs were used was one-sixth the rate when EHRs were not used (Dolan, 2012). Conclusion The Electronic Health Record is still fairly new to some facilities so people may not know all the risks. People are misinformed about the risks of the EHR and this paper will hopefully educate readers on the topic. People will be surprised to learn the risks are not as many as they think, in fact, implementing and EHR may actually decrease the legal risks and improve patient care