The Impact of Electronic Medical Records on Healthcare

Identification

• Electronic medical records are digital versions of the numerous paper forms that follow patients through their lives from doctor to doctor or during hospital stays. Often, paper records grow to several inches deep; to find information within paper records, you must search manually, which is difficult and slow.

Types

• Basic electronic medical record systems are comprised of four categories: prescription orders, test orders, test and imaging results and physician and nursing staff notes.

Effects

• Practitioners using an electronic medical records system have all patient information at their fingertips, via handheld electronic devices or laptop computers, thus instant availability of a patient’s health history. They can make changes to patients’ records—a change in prescription or addition to a patient’s regimen—that take effect immediately.

Impact

• The main result of electronic medical records is faster health care decisions on the part of the physician, and faster implementation of those decisions by support staff. Electronic records also result in higher accuracy in prescriptions and treatments.

Safety

• Electronic medical records can positively impact hospital mortality rates. One reason is that electronic records contain information on medication interactions and conflicts and allergies for patients. According to e-MDs.com, depending on the electronic system used, prescribing physicians will be automatically alerted to any potential adverse reactions for the patient. If the system detects no problems based on the records, the software will send the prescription to a pharmacy for fulfillment.

Acceptance

• About 39 percent of physicians who responded to a 2008 survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control use electronic health records systems. This is up from about 30 percent in 2006.

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