Today’s Times Picayune article entitled Doctors Puzzled over Katrina patients is about the need to move toward a system of electronic medical records: "Studies have shown that electronic records can reduce medical errors — sometimes the result of chicken-scratch handwriting — and eliminate waste by preventing doctors from duplicating tests that were already given in another setting. For that to happen, the record must follow the patient." The article goes on to highlight the need for interoperability and cooperation. Technology is the easy part.
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EMR can contribute in a major way for the betterment and advancement of health care.Computerized medical records will definitely reduce redundant data entry,reduce errors,save time and accelerate the creation of results..
I recently litigated a cse where the extensive use of medical records caused a problem for the defendant because we were able to show that there were formatting errors in the production of the records, thus, there were problems with the reliability of the medical records themselves. Electronic medical records may create a better, cleaner record but I am not convinced that these outweigh the legal problems they cause during litigation.
Without violating any HIPAA disclosure laws, I dealt with some pre-Katrina Charity hospital patients in an ongoing matter and was able to request all of the medical records on cd, post-Katrina. Charity was all digital for a few years before Katrina and most of those records survived the storm just fine.
And a point of trivia, all of the VA Hospitals are 100% digital as well, and have been for some time now.