Think that electronic health records are a gift from baby Jesus to cure all that ails modern medicine? Think again…
A new article from Bloomberg points out that even though EHRs are meant to decrease errors and help with patient care coordination, they may be causing more problems than they are fixing. Certainly, removing paper charts is good when it comes to illegible doctor’s handwriting. In fact, digital records reduced some common medical errors, to the tune of more than 17 million medication mistakes avoided in the U.S. each year because of hospitals’ use of computerized prescription-ordering systems. In such systems, sloppy handwriting is irrelevant, and doctors get pop-up alerts when attempting to prescribe dangerous drug combinations.
But computers are far from foolproof. According to a 2011 study from the FDA, dangerous doses of drugs have been given because of confusing drop-down menus; patients have undergone unnecessary surgeries because their electronic records displayed incorrect information; and computer-network delays in sending medical images have resulted in serious injury or death. Nurses in several hospitals across the country have complained about medications disappearing from patient files.
No one really knows how much of this is computer error vs human error. But unlike companies that produce medical devices, software companies that make electronic medical records are not obligated to report all malfunctions, serious injuries and deaths involving their products to the FDA. Much of what is known is through voluntary reporting.
Students for Quality Health Care 
Reblogged this on You Think You Know.
If you actually purchase an EHR some of the problems become clear. The biggest problem is the belief that doctors know how to set up the system for safety and efficiency. They do not. They tend to set up the system like the system they know and most importantly to avoid anything that would add work or responsibility (i.e. approve only those things that reduce work and reduce responsibility for them). The goal should be better patient care. Before being too critical of any given EHR ask whether drug side-effect checking is turned on, ask if the physician (not just the nurse) uses the prescription module, ask if there is a patient portal, ask if patients can look at test results on the portal (not just their bill), ask if a patient picture is displayed for staff and providers to reduce entering data on the wrong patient. The EHR is not monolithic, there are so many options you have to know which ones are being used to say anything about whether it “works”.