Glory Tuesday

A certain segment of the population is prone to paranoia. They see the threat of Big Brother everywhere and are terrified that each new advance is technology is going to expose information about them to those who would use it against them. As a result, they have attempted to stall some of the major developments in modern digital technology. This includes the use of electronic health records, more commonly referred to as EHRs.

A simple EHR definition : Electronic health records are patient health records that are stored, updated, and transmitted electronically. They are part of an enterprise system that allows the record to be accessed at multiple sites.

The medical community as a whole as well as the federal government believes that EHRs will significantly improve the quality and efficiency of medical care. As such, there are a variety of incentives currently be offered to doctors, hospitals, clinics, and other health care facilities to assistant them in converting to electronic systems by 2015.

The advantages of eliminating paper records in favor of electronic ones are much the same as in any field. Copying, storage and sharing of records becomes significantly easier and more cost effective. In the medical field there is an even better reason to switch: electronic records, which are typed into computer, are far less likely to be misread or misinterpreted. Impossible to read charts lead to thousands of patient deaths in hospitals around the country. Errors in prescriptions compound those numbers. EHRs virtually eliminate those problems — and related problems — thereby improving the qualify of medical care across the board.

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