Yes, there are Issues With EMRs. But Paper Medical Records Are Not Coming Back Anytime Soon.

As detailed in a recent Linked In article (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/yes-issues-emrs-paper-medical-records-coming-back-anytime-carlson/), articles that criticize the EHR tend to avoid a historical comparison to the days of paper-based records, and that’s partially because it’s hard to document those errors. EHRs in an odd way provide their own spotlight on their failures, whereas paper record errors would require extensive manual review to find — the very type of work EHRs sought to replace.

And there’s a failure to recognize that some of the problems with EMR – such as excessive drop downs – came as a result of fixing medical errors with paper records, where information could simply be left out.

Despite the criticism, sales of EMR continue to grow, as they have every year since 2007, when we first began market reporting on the technology.  We estimate the market reached $31.5 billion in 2018 and continues to grow, according to our latest study ” EMR 2019: The Market for Electronic Medical Records,”

EMRs are under attack these days – portrayed as time wasters, stress causers, and even according to one major media account, killers. Yet some of those criticisms seem to conveniently forget the paper records they replaced and their own problems.   In this article, we look at the EMR market, the criticism of EMRs and the past criticisms of paper records.   

Read the Article Here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/yes-issues-emrs-paper-medical-records-coming-back-anytime-carlson/