Besides the worry of security and possible computer hacking to view medical records, a new worry has emerged- can templates used by physicians in the implementation of digitalizing their records cause gross mistakes to their medical charts which then is passed forward, causing future medical mistakes and misdiagnoses to be made?
If a vital flaw in the system structure prevents proper transfer of patient data from paper to digital form, the information will be incorrect or incomplete. Again, if the past medical history or allergy record is not downloaded into the system with transfer, important alerts for decision support will not be generated.
“Practices need to closely examine how the EHR is set up and used on a continual basis to maintain the efficacy of the patient records and efficiency of the practice” according to Ron Sterling, an HIT author on hitechanswers.net
The apprehension that patient safety can be affected by EHRs and health IT in general has been ventolin online australia ongoing and is addressed by the Institute of Medicine in the report that was issued in November, called Safeguarding Access for Every Medicare Patient Act.
Meanwhile, physicians who have adopted electronic health records have been surveyed and according to modernmedicine.com, more than half of doctors questioned stated that they adopted EHRs in their practice to improve patient quality of care. However, 89 percent of primary care physicians are worried that implementation of electronic record systems will cost too much money and disrupt their current practice. Results of the survey reflect adoption of the new systems by smaller hospitals which showed lower than expected adoption of digital practices. A Health Affairs study reported that adoption was “dismally low” at the moment.
Does your healthcare provider still use paper records? How do you feel about this?
