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December 15th, 2006

Are Electronic Health Records Coming Soon?

Often, medical malpractice occurs for the simplest of reasons: One health care practitioner did not effectively communicate a problem to another. And often, this is simply because of sloppy record keeping or illegible handwriting.

So it is worthy to note from this AP story last week, that the era of electronic medical records may well be here:

WASHINGTON – Five of the nation’s largest employers plan to soon give their workers an unusual health-care benefit: their very own electronic medical records that they can take when they travel, change jobs, or see a new doctor.

About 2.5 million workers and their dependents would have access to their health records through their computers. The records would be compiled by an independent, nonprofit organization. The information would be stored in a database that only the employee would supposedly be able to access.

The companies providing the electronic health records are Applied Materials Inc., BP America Inc., Intel Corp., Pitney Bowes Inc., and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The companies hope that cutting out the paperwork in health care will reduce administrative costs, duplicative care and medical errors.

Of course, this will raise another problem, that of privacy if too many folks can snoop through the records. But if that issue can be addressed, we may solve one of the many problems that bedevil our healthcare system.

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are electronic health records coming soon?
cross-posted from ny personal injury attorney blog. often, medical malpractice occurs for the simplest of reasons: one health care practitioner did not effectively communicate a problem to another. and often, this is simply because of

posted by Eric Turkewitz @ December 20, 2006 12:32 PM

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