Electronic Medical Records

March 6th, 2012

In the business section of today’s New York Times, there is an article titled “Digital Records May Not Cut Health Care Costs, Study Cautions.” The article talks about how keeping patient records on computers are unlikely to cut healthcare costs and may potentially increase health care costs because of extra tests ordered by physicians.  It was postulated that the reasons more tests were ordered is because they were easier to order.

By coincidence, I began my training for an electronic medical record (EMR) today.  With every click, I was reminded at the inefficiency of paper charts.  I recall many days at my previous primary care clinic where the file room clerk would be out sick, and the nurses had to take time away from patient care to scramble to find charts.  Sometimes, the charts would be lost.  Imagine seeing a patient with 3 or more chronic diseases and taking 10 medications without a chart!    Hunting down charts was a time waster, and required extraordinary resources to keep updated.

How do I account for the ordering of more tests by physicians in that study?  It is rather easy to blame the electronic medical system, but I think we should look at the clinicians themselves.  Overall, there are too many unnecessary tests being ordered.  History and physical are becoming lost arts in lieu of total body CT scans and vitamin levels du jour (currently it’s vitamin D but previously was vitamin E).

I disagree that EMR’s will be a burden to the healthcare system.  The time saved by EMR is time a health care provider can see more patients, is time he/she can talk and counsel the patient, is time to build a patient’s trust.  That is invaluable.

I agree with Dr. McCormick’s quote at the end of the article, “I am a primary care doctor, and I would never go back.”