What Is an Electronic Health Record?

Electronic Health records present a major step forward in patient care, helping to ensure continuity of care and to cut down on health care costs.

Function

• Electronic Health Records, or EHRs, serve as a one-stop clearinghouse for all of your medical information. They allow health care providers to easily access everything they need to know to better aid in your recovery.

Size

• The EHRs are digital, so they can be as big as they need to be, without the downside of having to be stored in a filing cabinet, as do paper records.

Information

• A variety of different types of information can be stored in the EHR. Doctors' notes, images such as from X-rays, lab test results, and overall treatment notes can all be included.

Benefits

• Before the advent of EHRs, your medical records could have been stored in several different places within a hospital. EHRs allow all that information to be collected and accessed by typing in an identifier, such as your Social Security Number.

Warning

• Not every hospital or physician practice has these systems because they are very expensive.