Considerations For A New And More Reliable Electronic Health Records System

By Author: DeeAnn
Total Articles: 6
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Any doctor can appreciate the advantages of having patient data stored on computers. It helps them avoid redundant tests, gather huge amounts of data for research, screen automatically for drug interactions, all with no problems with notoriously illegible handwriting. With the modernization of technology affecting the medical industry, many are beginning to give electronic health records a second look.
American doctors have never been against the digital revolution. Looking up lab results and x-rays on computer screens beat out carbon copies and sheet film in an instant. Even doctors and medical professionals nowadays rely on computers and modern technology. But the animosity between medicine and modern technology began with the Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) system, which was used for entering patients' hospital orders onto a computer database.
Many doctors were forced to use computerized orders or risk losing their hospital privileges. Most of them found that CPOE is a lot harder than writing out orders on paper, takes far more time and in too many ways is just not as good.
Doctors even complained ...
... that they can't order certain things with those buttons and pull-down menus that they could in writing. Specific doctor's orders such as unique patient requirements, and personalized requests were hard to enter in the fledgling electronic medical record technology, and even harder to follow up on.
After the immediate issues with CPOE and the lingering possibility that the system might fail, the next concern with putting all that medical data on a nationwide computer network was privacy. For a time, doctor-patient confidentiality seemed quite likely to be one of the sacrifices Americans will be required to make to get the electronic health records project going.
Health care is a labyrinth of insurers, doctors, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, all using different computer systems. For those who are looking forward to improving the technology used in electronic health records, the question is whether to build a comprehensive system that is accessible to all concerned areas, or figure out a way to integrate existing systems and allow smooth transition of data. For now, doctors and their patients can only wait for the next system with sheer anticipation.