“Whether referred to as electronic medical records, electronic health records, or electronic patient records, there is no doubting the tremendous potential benefits that the digitization of medical data holds for the health care industry and the public at large. EMRs can make a patient’s medical information readily accessible to a range of treating professionals, whether for routine visits or emergencies in which a patient cannot personally provide the critical information practitioners require. EMRs also permit doctors to preserve information about a patient visit during the visit itself rather than hours later, when clinic impressions may no longer be as precise; allow automated identification of potential drug interactions; enable medical practitioners to spend less time with paperwork and more time with patients; and make medical information easily transferrable for those patients who relocate or seek to change physicians. In fact, these and other benefits of EMRs are so readily apparent that as part of the $787 billion financial stimulus package that President Obama signed into law in February 2009, the so-called HITECH Act included billions of dollars in government incentives for medical providers that transition from paper records to EMRs.”
Article
Robert Radick, jdsupra, 5 December 2012
