Electronic Health Records (EHR): Introduction

The concept of Electronic Health Records is as old as any computerized form of record keeping. As early as 1991 Health and Human Services (HHS) began to urge providers to adopt Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in their facilities to computerize their patient records. However, adoption of EMRs and the move towards a National Health Information Network (NHIN) that would provide a centralized national database of Health records is yet to materialize. I hope to explore the concept of EHR, it's benefits, challenges to adoption, and future prospects in many posts to come. In this post, I will provide a brief introduction to EHR.

EMR & EHR

A EMR is a digitized documentation of clinical records, patient data, and billing information processed in a single health care facility. EMR also refers to the system/databases that a provider uses to document such information. EHR refers to,

"a systematic collection of electronic health information about individual patients or populations. It is a record in digital format that is theoretically capable of being shared across different health care settings. In some cases this sharing can occur by way of network-connected enterprise-wide information systems and other information networks or exchanges. EHRs may include a range of data, including demographics, medical history, medication and allergies, immunization status, laboratory test results, radiology images, vital signs, personal stats like age and weight, and billing information."

EMRs and EHRs are obviously not unique to the US and have been adopted and being developed in many parts of the world. In fact, the US has one of the lowest adoption rates in the world and is lagging behind in employing this technology to keep track of patient information.

There are number of benefits to EHR adoption. 

• EHR's make it easy for clinicians and staff to access patient information and make informed decisions without having to sort through paper files.
• Errors produced by human transcription or illegible handwritten for instance as less of concern with EHR. Although human data entry error is still possible, there are a number of ways to reduce this by automatic entry information.
• Access to patient records over various care settings can reduce redundancies with testing and analysis. 
• Reduces the risk of conflicting treatment plans and medication toxicity across multiple providers.
• Reduces administrative costs associated with space for file storage, retrieval of archived information, and processing requests for records across facilities.
• Increased security with disaster recovery and encryption of PHI.

Given these benefits, Congress passed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) in 2009 to encourage EHR adoption and made it a national priority. The carrots and stick approach of HITECH provides incentives for early adoption and mandates adoption by 2015 or be faced with penalties. Given the influx of money available to providers to adopt EHR more and more hospitals and clinics are beginning to adopt EHR. Still, EHR remains a challenge for many providers. I'll explore these challenges in future posts...