The Obama administration is now devoting billions of dollars to promote electronic health records (EHR) for doctors. Existing office management software on the marketplace answers the billing and patient management needs but falls short of a truly paperless office.

The promise of a paperless office is certainly seductive. The notion of physicians and patients having access to their medical records from any computer would improve medical quality and efficiency. Every doctor knows how frustrating it is to see a patient in the emergency room when the relevant medical records are sitting in the primary doctor’s office or in a hospital across town. Conversely, EHR permits the primary physician, who may not have been the hospital treating physician, to be easily updated after hospital discharge when the patient returns to his office.

Many patients today don’t know their medications and can’t recall prior illnesses or even operations.   This can create big problems for physicians who prescribe medication without knowing the patients drug history including adverse reactions and potential mal-interactions.  EHR solves this issue.

EHR also permits easy analysis of patient data to track important medical benchmarks including colon cancer screening, Pap smears, immunizations, mammograms and other preventative tests. Many Doctors who still use paper, rely on old fashioned methods to track who is due for a screening colonoscopy. EHR technology could permit Doctors offices to contact all patients who reach the milestone age of 50 alerting them that their colon cancer screening experience is due. This would be superior to our current manual mail & call technique.

EHR also eliminates the frustration of a missing medical chart. Electronic files are also more current, since data is entered much faster than paper reports. Sending medical records to other physicians’ offices could be accomplished with a keystroke, which traditionally can take weeks. EHR also eliminates the inscrutable penmanship of physicians, which at times needed CIA code breakers to decipher.

With EHR, patients could have their complete medical data, including EKGs and actual x-ray images on a personal flash key. With this technology, a doctor on a cruise ship could see your chest x-ray from 2 weeks ago.
Over time, EHR saves money by improving office efficiency, reducing repeating medical tests and reducing postage expenses.

If this system promises physicians a medical utopia, then why doesn’t every doctor sign up? The New England Journal of Medicine reported in their April 16, 2009 issue only 17% of physicians are using some degree of EHR in their offices.

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