New and emerging technologies have transformed healthcare in recent years. Hospitals and physician offices large and small have implemented new technologies to respond to a changing regulatory environment and to improve the overall quality of care for patients. Today’s medical facilities are high-tech operations that put cutting-edge technologies into the hands of talented professionals. Even still, significant opportunities remain for hospitals and healthcare settings to streamline their implementation and usage of new technologies.<br />IT services for healthcare have never been more vital. The right IT partner can help your medical facility fully realize the extraordinary benefits of information technology in healthcare. Our IT services can help your medical facility operate with fewer errors, comply with today’s regulations, and recover quickly from unexpected disasters. Our electronic health records (EHR) systems can help your staff reliably record crucial patient health data and seamlessly share that data with other healthcare providers. Most importantly, the healthcare IT support provided here at Worldwide Services will help to improve the quality of care that patients receive from your staff.<br />As medical facilities across the country continue to modernize, the need for robust and responsive healthcare IT support will only increase. With Worldwide Services, your facility can find the affordable and efficient IT services you need.<br /> <br />The Opportunities and Challenges of Healthcare IT Standards<br />Today’s medical facilities are built on the individual expertise of talented physicians, nurses and staff, but patients receive the best care when all these team members work together. Through legislation like the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009, Congress pushed medical facilities to modernize their IT systems, particularly regarding the use of electronic health records. These shared, detailed records allow a patient’s medical providers to act as a team and make crucial healthcare decisions based on the totality of a patient’s health record.<br />EHRs are now used across the medical landscape, but there are significant problems that need to be addressed for EHRs to live up to their promise. Over 85% of office-based doctors use an EHR system, but most doctors are calling for change. In a 2016 poll, 63% of doctors agree that EHRs have improved patient care, but 71% think that EHRs are a cause of physician burnout. Even worse, 69% of doctors indicated that they have less time for patients because of the time they spend writing and reading EHRs. Clearly, there’s a need for change.<br />The specific concerns these doctors raise highlight the value of health information technology. In the same poll, doctors called for change in the user interface of EHR systems and improved interoperability between EHR systems. A healthcare IT support partner is vital for implementing both of these changes. EHR user interfaces need to be intuitive, user-centered and easy to use, and Worldwide Services can help build such systems from the ground up. Interoperability is a larger goal that will require reliable networking and carefully constructed systems, along with cooperation of regulatory bodies and other healthcare partners. The 21st Century Cures Act, passed in 2016, charged regulatory agencies with creating standards for interoperable, usable and accessible EHRs. It won’t be enough to just have electronic records — you’ll have to be able to share and receive records from other providers, even ones outside of your system.<br />The new era of EHRs will bring many benefits to the medical community. For one, patients will undoubtedly benefit when they can be confident that their chosen medical providers will have immediate access to their health records, no matter where they seek treatment. However, there are many challenges that healthcare providers will face as they adjust to the new healthcare information technology standards. EHRs should be usable and available to all of a patient’s healthcare providers, and they need to be highly secure, as well. Privacy and security guidelines established by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in 1996 and since refined and expanded hold healthcare providers to a high standard.<br />It’s crucial to have an experienced healthcare IT provider capable of implementing services that follow the required standards. You need a professional partner that can help ensure that your EHRs are easy to record, access and share, while also private and secure.<br />The Role of Healthcare IT Support<br />At its core, healthcare information technology is all about communication — communication between devices, between team members, between patients and their medical providers, between separate medical facilities. These communication channels are enabled by carefully-selected and installed hardware solutions, and maintained with prompt and effective repair services. These components should be scalable and flexible so that your network can grow along with your facility.<br />Information technology’s role in communications also puts it on the frontlines of your facility’s security team. Healthcare IT standards, patient privacy rights and patient well-being all require a trustworthy, secure network that is transparent and easy for your staff to use but opaque and secure against unauthorized users. A healthcare IT services provider can help your facility initiate best practices for network security. Today’s patients expect their data to be secure, and we can help establish your reputation as a trustworthy steward of patient data.<br /><br />