EMR Adoption: Not what you might expect

Are urban or rural physician practices more likely to adopt electronic medical records (EMR)?  The answer is suprrising.  A paper by Whitacre (2016) finds the following: Overall practice-level EMR adoption rates generally increase with the degree of rurality and range from 47 percent in the most urban counties to over 60 percent in the most…

A super EMR?

Sources of health care data are proliferating.  The previous standard–medical charts–are being augmented with information from digital sensors, patient reported outcomes, and genetic information. Wouldn’t it be nice to have all that information in one place?  That is what Salesforce is thinking.  Fortune reports: Salesforce announced on Wednesday a new patient relationship management platform that…

The downside of EHRs

Electronic Health Records can help doctors access the information they need regardless of whether they have treated you before. Setting up integrated health care systems or systems where EHR networks are interoperable can improve this facility across healthcare organizations. However, this approach is not without risks, as shown by this recent hacking episode at Anthem.…

The downside of EMRs

…is the potential for data breaches. Experian’s 2015 industry data breach forecast notes the following: We expect healthcare breaches will increase — both due to potential economic gain and digitization of records. Increased movement to electronic medical records (EMRs), and the introduction of wearable technologies introduced millions of individuals into the healthcare system, and, in…

“The medical marketplace is broken”

This quote is from David Blumenthal, a physician and former Harvard Medical School professor, who was the national coordinator for health information technology between 2009-2011.  He describes in an interview for the Atlantic why adoption of electronic medical records has been so slow in the U.S. From the patient’s perspective, this is a no-brainer. The benefits…