Paperless Healthcare
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- Date Submitted: 02/03/2011 07:40 PM
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Paper vs. Technology:
How Health Care Providers Manage Patient Records
A Case Study of HIMG
Johnson, Estep, Fridley, Marriott, and Stone 1
Paper vs. Technology:
How Health Care Providers Manage Patient Records
A Case Study of HIMG
Since the medical industry began, it has used hand-written notes as a means of recording patients’ information. This system has worked just fine for hundreds of years; however, times have changed. Society, as a whole, is moving farther and farther away from the era of writing things by hand. Instead of letters, there is now e-mail. Instead of newspapers, there are articles on the Internet. Books are even being printed online and can be viewed on electronic devices instead of being printed and viewed in physical books. All industries, whether they be technical in nature or not, have adopted more and more technology and now use paper and the art of hand-writing information less often.
Undoubtedly, with all this in mind, one could begin to ask him/herself a series of questions. Why then, has our health care system been so slow to adapt to the times? Why do the majority of primary care physicians still choose to scribble down hand-written notes about patients in paper charts that are kept in file cabinets? Why do so many health care professionals insist on keeping themselves open to making the same errors in patient records that they have been vulnerable to for centuries? Switching to a paperless system just makes sense. Paperless systems have marvelous capabilities that doctors cannot readily compete with their old-fashioned charts. For instance, electronic medical records (EMRs) can automatically update themselves when new information on
Johnson, Estep, Fridley, Marriott, and Stone 2
a vaccine becomes available from the Centers for Disease Control (A Buyer’s Guide to Medical Software, 2010). EMRs allow for quicker transmittance of information in everything from billing to a patient’s test results—and...
How Health Care Providers Manage Patient Records
A Case Study of HIMG
Johnson, Estep, Fridley, Marriott, and Stone 1
Paper vs. Technology:
How Health Care Providers Manage Patient Records
A Case Study of HIMG
Since the medical industry began, it has used hand-written notes as a means of recording patients’ information. This system has worked just fine for hundreds of years; however, times have changed. Society, as a whole, is moving farther and farther away from the era of writing things by hand. Instead of letters, there is now e-mail. Instead of newspapers, there are articles on the Internet. Books are even being printed online and can be viewed on electronic devices instead of being printed and viewed in physical books. All industries, whether they be technical in nature or not, have adopted more and more technology and now use paper and the art of hand-writing information less often.
Undoubtedly, with all this in mind, one could begin to ask him/herself a series of questions. Why then, has our health care system been so slow to adapt to the times? Why do the majority of primary care physicians still choose to scribble down hand-written notes about patients in paper charts that are kept in file cabinets? Why do so many health care professionals insist on keeping themselves open to making the same errors in patient records that they have been vulnerable to for centuries? Switching to a paperless system just makes sense. Paperless systems have marvelous capabilities that doctors cannot readily compete with their old-fashioned charts. For instance, electronic medical records (EMRs) can automatically update themselves when new information on
Johnson, Estep, Fridley, Marriott, and Stone 2
a vaccine becomes available from the Centers for Disease Control (A Buyer’s Guide to Medical Software, 2010). EMRs allow for quicker transmittance of information in everything from billing to a patient’s test results—and...