One of the really good reasons to use an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is that it helps to coordinate care among the various providers working on a single case. This is certainly one of the points that has been used to sell EMRs and to justify the huge upcoming federal investment in them. But, do they really work?
Ann O'Malley and a team from The Center for Studying Health System Change interviewed 60 users from 26 practices across the country and asked them how their commercial EMR fared in supporting coordination of care. The found some good news: EMR users reported that in-office coordination was improved. However, they also found some bad news: EMRs are not so good at the much more difficult task of coordinating care across offices (as when the Primary Care Provider refers to a specialist across town). The full report is in the March 2010 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine. You can see the abstract here.)
To squeeze the real value out of EMRs, we're going to need new approaches to Health Information Exchange. The EMR is a multi-purpose tool, but it will need some different kinds of features if it is to improve care the way some single-purpose tools (like Vermedx) do.
I agree with you there, "One of the really good reasons to use an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is that it helps to coordinate care among the various providers working on a single case." well said. EMR will also protect us if we use the system well and are meticulous about our usage. Anyway, thanks for sharing this post. Keep posting!
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