Electronic Health Record Essay

As we enter into the age of the electronic health record, we are finding numerous benefits that this technology has to offer patients, physicians, and other healthcare workers. The patient’s record is immediately available to the physician, enabling them to give the patient the best care based on their medical history. Physicians are able to transfer and access records with ease, making their job of caring for the patient as accurate as possible. Health data workers are able to access the same record and appropriately bill payers in a timely fashion. This is just scratching the surface of the benefits that the electronic health record offers. What could possibly be a downside to this technology? There is something that we have been hearing more of over the last few years. Health Data Security breaches are on the rise. Even though a standard paper health record can be susceptible to these breaches, the electronic health record opens a whole new …show more content…
Consider this to be similar to a door that they have the ability to open, or close and lock. Medical facilities can program this software, and/or hardware, and decide what comes in and what goes out, thus limiting what data is transmitted outside their internal network based on security requirements (Beal). This type of technology can help catch unencrypted files that may have been unintentionally sent to an outside source. When this occurs, it is considered a breach. Use of the firewall can help prevent unintentional breaches such as this from happening. The firewall can also be used to prevent outside computers from accessing their network. Some downsides to this technology are the cost and performance. In order to keep up with the most current trends, better, newer and more expensive equipment may be needed. This can become very costly. The firewall may also slow performance to some degree, but is well worth the benefit of the security that it

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