There’s a great blog post over at the KevinMD.com Medical Blog, talking about a new study of the effectiveness of electronic medical records. It says that according to a study of 3,000 hospitals, the switch to electronic medical records is not showing any improvement in patient care. However, according to KevinMD, the reason for it is that doctor’s offices are using outdated methods of transferring paper to the computers, and outdated systems in general:
Very few physicians use electronic record systems effectively. For instance, many are simply scanning paper records into a computer, which provides minimal benefit. It’s difficult to track quality improvement data doing that. The problem is further compounded by the archaic interfaces that the current generation of EMRs have, which is akin to a user interface circa Windows 95.
It’s no wonder that most doctors find electronic medical systems actually slows them down. The next generation of systems needs to focus on facilitating the doctor-patient encounter, rather than being an impediment.
The continued use of PHRs, particularly a portable and easy to use system like 911 Medical ID is surely part of the solution.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 9:05 am and is filed under Electronic Medical Records News.
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