Definition of Electronic Medical Records

Electronic medical records are records about patient care that are kept on a computer rather than on paper, the traditional medium for patient histories.These records can include extensive information about a patient's general health, current and past illnesses and medical conditions, diagnostic test results and treatments and medications prescribed. Often, electronic medical records also include an application for prescribing and ordering medication.

Advantages

• Computerized records have several advantages over traditional paper records:
  1. The data tends to be more accurate. Electronic records eliminate the possibility of mistakes as a result of misreading a doctor's handwriting.
  2. They're easily accessible to all care providers and to more than one care provider at a time.
  3. They're easy to store and take up less space than paper records.
  4. They're easily portable from one doctor's office to another.
  5. Their use can lead to cost savings, since keeping electronic records is more efficient than retaining paper records,

Disadvantages

• Disadvantages of computerized records include the following:
  1. The possible incompatibility of computer systems among various health care providers can lead to difficulty in sharing the data.
  2. Privacy and security can be an issue. If someone hacks into a computer system, thousands of patients' records can be compromised. Also, some critics say the federal government wants to use electronic records systems to ration health care services.
  3. Computer crashes make records inaccessible.
  4. The cost of implementing an electronic records system can be expensive.

Prevalence

• In the United States, health care providers have been slow to implement electronic records systems. A study that appeared recently in the New England Journal of Medicine found that only 1.5 percent of hospitals in the United States have a comprehensive electronic medical records system.

Obstacles

• Cost remains a major deterrent to the implementation of electronic medical records, especially in small practices. The initial outlay for these systems can total hundreds of thousands of dollars, something many physicians are not willing to spend. Doctors' reluctance to accept the new systems has also slowed their adoption in the United States, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The Push for Digital

• The federal government, hoping for increased efficiencies and cost savings, wants doctors and hospitals to computerize their records. To that end, the government is providing $19 billion in incentives for health care providers to implement electronic records as part of the federal stimulus package.