As an IT man, I have always noted how reluctant MDs are to embrace business technology. Although medicine is one of most high-tech fields we come in contact with, the technology rests in the medical equipment, and that’s where it stops. The average florist makes more use of databases, customer profile management, and every other aspect of modern computerized business than any MD out there. Go into a doctor’s office, and you will see a wall of paper jackets behind the receptionist. Those are the paper records that medicine still runs on, just as it was in the Fifties.
“Those are the paper records that medicine still runs on.” Inefficient, error-prone, yes; likely to be hacked, no. There’s a bright side to everything.
Oh, one other thing: a disgruntled employee sabotaged my former internist’s EMR system. Short of arson, that sort of thing is more difficult to accomplish with hard copy. There’s a flip side to everything.
Lawyers and government have a lot to do with that.
Without a paper records the doctor gets sued because he can’t proof this or that.
Government wants electronic records so they have direct access to them. It is as simple as that. I prefer my medical records stay in my doctor’s filing cabinet.
Sorry, that should have been “... prove this or that.”