The Health Information Managers Association of Nigeria (HIMAN) has called for electronic health (e-health) record keeping to enhance quality health care.
According to HIMAN President, Wole Ajayi, e-health record gives doctors, patients and other health care providers quick and easy access to patients’ medical record facilities.
Ajayi said the proposed health bill is designed to provide a framework for regulation of health services, and may not be favourable towards health records, explaining that the health bill failed to cover the statute of limitation on the retention of hospital and clinical records.
"For example, lack of space to keep document may make facilities destroy some of the patients’ records. This will definitely affect the disposition and destruction of records," he said.
He said despite global transformation from manual health record keeping to e-health record keeping, dependency on manual record keeping was still being encouraged to a large extent in the country.
Ajayi stated that the paper-based record keeping system was the most common method of recording patient information in most hospitals.
"Many physicians still find their ease of data entry hard to part with. Manual recording may be easy but it requires large amount of storage, compared to digital records. When paper records are stored in different location, collecting them to a single location for review by health care providers is time consuming and complicated, but this process can be simplified with e-records,” he said.
“Also, unlike manual system that requires space to store hard copies of patients' record, the EHR doesn't. It also facilitates exchange of data and saves time and prevents physical strain on the patients.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Yinka Ojo
Quelle/Source: Daily Times Nigeria, 25.04.2012
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