The Electronic Medical Record (EMRs) is one of the tools which should make it possible for physicians and hospitals to deliver safer, better care.

Why?

The patient’s comprehensive record, including medications the patient takes and ones the patient does not tolerate or can’t have, will be in that record, for example. EMRs also will include the patient’s full, current medication record. The risk for medication errors goes down significantly when this information is available. If there has been lab work or other recent testing, as soon as those results are available, the information appears on the EMR.

Doctors will no longer be working without the paper they didn’t know they needed—a test with results they did not know about, for example.

When a patient is discharged from the hospital, research shows that the disconnect between the hospital and the patient’s own doctor is growing. Patients return to their own doctors, with the doctor left to guess what happened. Unacceptable. However, unacceptable has been the standard for years. Hospital patients are sicker than ever. This won’t do.

These are only a few of the things to like about EMRs.

Nothing’s perfect.

EMRs, if obtained by an unauthorized person, can lead to a breach of the patient’s privacy. Let’s say a laptop with patient information on it is stolen, something that has happened several times in recent years. If the thief wanted the data, not the laptop, thousands of records would be shared, violating the confidentiality of everyone whose records are on that laptop.

Functionality—getting the system up and going—is job one.

Protecting patient privacy should be job one, too.

Functionality and privacy protection must be built in, at the same time, every step of the way as the EMR system is built.

This Medpage Today story explains how the implementation has been going so far.

Nothing’s magic, either. EMRs are only going to be as good as the humans making the entries. Doctors and nurses are going to have to adapt to this method of record keeping. It may temporarily change the interactions between patients and care-givers as they get used to this new way of record-keeping.

EMRs, just like medications, can be powerful tools. Anything strong enough to help you, can hurt you if not used as intended.

This is not a geek subject. This is about your private medical information, who sees it, who adds to it and how it is kept safe.

Medpage Today

“Requirements for ensuring patient privacy and the efficient flow of information in the new “meaningful use” rules came under fire at a House subcommittee hearing on Tuesday.

“As part of the Recovery Act, the federal government will be offering financial incentives beginning in 2011 to physicians and hospitals that make “meaningful use” of electronic health records. One of the meaningful use requirements calls for physicians and hospitals to test whether their patient data can be exchanged with other health providers.”

…”David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, national coordinator for health information technology at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said that the important part of enabling information exchange wasn’t the information itself, but setting up the infrastructure.

“You need the ‘pipes’ to enable information to flow, and you need agreements among doctors and hospitals about the terms of the exchange,” he said. “You also need to verify who’s a doctor and who’s not; you don’t want information flowing to people who don’t deserve to have it.” (Emphasis added)

Source: Medpage Today, July 22, 2010