The healthcare community has an opportunity to make proposed improvements to EHRs a reality.
NYeC Executive Director Valerie Grey on the opportunity to make health informaiton innovation a reality:
Depending on who you ask, electronic health records (EHRs) are a blessing, a curse, or both. While moving to digital medical records has undoubtedly saved countless lives and improved healthcare overall, many providers struggle with them, either from a lack of vendor responsiveness, an inability to communicate with other providers, or not enough information to evaluate the quality of the EHR systems themselves.
Certainly, no one is suggesting we go back to a time before keeping electronic records, when patient information was recorded on paper, coordinating with providers required phone calls and fax machines, and illegible handwriting could result in avoidable medical errors. But today, EHRs have presented different kinds of usability and patient safety issues. Improving the transparency of EHRs is critical if we want to continue to improve healthcare in our communities.