Why EMR?

By Adam Pittman

Electronic Medical Records commonly referred to as EMR or EHR (Electronic Health Records), have been around for more than 30 years. They’re wonderful tools for practitioners. Doctors have your medical history literally at their fingertips. Your practitioner will know all your information (age, drugs you regularly take, previous injuries, allergies, surgeries, etc.) immediately, not to mention helping doctors prevent mistakes by alerting them to things like drug interactions. The use of an EMR could very well help save your life. So why in the world would your doctor choose not to use EMR? Or better yet, why would you choose a doctor who is not using EMR?

There are many reasons why some doctors don’t use EMR. In some cases, it comes down to plain old economics. Despite the popular belief that all doctors are rich and all practices make money, the facts can be quite surprising. Many practices just struggle through for a series of reasons that can be as simple as their location (being in an economically suppressed area) to treating patients who have inadequate or no health insurance (and make no mistake, many doctors are philanthropic in nature).

In other cases they think that they would have to change the way they practice so much it is not worth the effort. Then there’s the daunting task of transferring the existing patient’s print records to an electronic system, followed by training their staff to use the new software. It’s no wonder why many doctors don’t want to implement EMR.

But the benefits outweigh the costs. In their 2001 study, Price Waterhouse Cooper estimated that the burden of paperwork for doctors using conventional paper records was about 30 minutes for each and every patient hour. Think of that; a doctor often works nine hours in his practice seeing patients. Now that doctor has to work an additional four hours and 30 minutes to update conventional patient records.

In most cases with a properly implemented EMR system, those 30 minutes can be cut down to five to eight minutes and can be completed during the examination. To the practitioner, this means more patients seen daily, hiring and managing a smaller staff, less work tracking down patient folders and fewer mistakes made. For you, it means shorter wait times and better care.

And what about prescriptions? Aside of other safety benefits, an EMR can prevent the doctor from prescribing a prescription that may interact harmfully with another drug you are taking. It might even help you get the drug you are prescribed.  A pharmacy manager at a Harris Teeter in Cary, NC, said he had to turn away a patient, who had recently undergone surgery, from getting a pain medication because he could not read the doctor’s handwriting. The patient had already been turned away by three other pharmacies. “All this could have been prevented if the doctor was using and EMR with e-prescribe features. The man did not have to suffer for the weekend like he did.” he said

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