The future of electronic health records
The digitisation of medical records in the United States has brought benefits, but not everyone is content with how they have been implemented.
Advances in medical imaging and the proliferation of diagnostic and screening tests have generated mountains of data on patient health. Digital information technology has seemed poised to revolutionize health care in the United States since 2009 when the Obama administration made the technology part of plans to revive a sinking economy. The US government has now spent tens of billions of dollars on putting patient information at doctors’ fingertips.
Yet many physicians have come to hate their computers. Overwhelmed by administrative work, they now spend more time attending to data entry than they do interact with patients. So far, electronic health records have not been the panacea to efficiency and safety that many expected them to be. But problems are being identified, and as such systems mature, there is still hope that they will live up to their potential.
Forty years ago, when personal computers were in their infancy, a person’s medical records comprised a few sheets of paper in a folder. Two decades later, these folders were bulging with photocopies, printouts and faxes of test results, but the medical profession was slow to adopt a digital remedy.
Since the United States began its big push in 2009, the digitalization of US medical records has soared. Data from the US Department of Health and Human Services show that in 2017, 96% of hospitals and 86% of physicians’ offices in the United States had access to electronic health records.
Many patients recognize the impact that electronic health records have made. A 2019 poll by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit health-care advocacy organization in San Francisco, California, found that 45% of US citizens think that electronic health records have improved the quality of care, with only 6% reporting a decline.
Yet, US primary-care physicians are discontent. In a 2018 survey by Stanford Medicine in California, 59% said they felt that the systems needed a complete overhaul. Health-care managers and developers of electronic health records are looking for fixes.