The paper tries to investigate all the principles and practices in the management of the electronic medical records.
ABSTRACT
For many years, health records have been controlled through paper based systems which are vulnerable to destruction, wear and loss hence hinders adequate usability, retrieval and access. In addition, this made health processes to be time consuming and expensive, making the manual records more unreliable. In bid to mitigate these challenges, the Ministry of Health in Kenya directed on the implementation and use of electronic health records.
The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which the hospital comply with the principles and practice of electronics health records, determine whether the hospitals have benefitted from their complies with the principles and practice of electronic health/ medical records and finally, determine the challenges faced by the hospitals in their compliance with the principles and practice of EHR and how the challenges can be mitigated against. The population of study was made up of 61 health care professionals out of whom 10 were Health Information Management (HIM) professionals, 15 clinicians, 5 non- clinicians, 1 doctor, 31 others as respondents.
The study applied purposive sampling where interview schedules were used in collecting data. Data analysis and interpretation was supplemented by the use Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The research also involved three research questions. The study found out that: public hospitals do not possess the requisite equipment for EHR; the hospital comply with the principles and practice of EHR, but have not overcome the challenges in Narok County.
The researcher made the following recommendations: that codes of ethics be adopted, utilization and application of all the principles outlined in the study, use of out sourcing techniques, staff development throughpersonal education, in-service training, workshops and seminars to increase competence, use of biometric identification, health insurance plans, policies and protection of patient’s privacy and voluntary consent. The researcher agrees that use of EHR has a positive motivation as well as challenge to health care professionals in Narok County Hospital.
