Paper based medical records may kill you
Article Source: HealthSnare.com
New research shows that the use of Electronic Health Records saved the lives of 15% of hospital patients. Are paper based medical records killing us?
A recent research done for Texas hospitals showed that medical facilities that have used EMR software as part of their patient treatment, managed to lower hospitalization costs, reduce the amount of medical complications, and especially reduce the amount of medical malpractice and accidental death.
The most important finding is that hospitals using electronic medical records in a large-scale, using paperless methods - were able to achieve significant reduction in death of their patients. This, as opposed to hospitals where control and management were paper based.
"If we apply these findings of this research on the general population in the United States, it is possible to save the lives of 100,000 patients every year", said Dr. Nil Poe, one of the researchers, at the Baltimore University Medical school. The research definitely shows that using significantly reduces the hospitalization costs, improves the quality of treatment and reduces potential mistakes during treatment.
Director of research at Dallas Alamo University, Dr. Ruben Amrasyngham, stated that the research was conducted differently than other researches that researched the effects of EMR on US hospitals. This research was generated after other researches placed doubt of the effectiveness of EHR software in saving lives and reducing costs. It is well known, that eighty percent of medical expenses are directed to only a quarter of patients. Due to this fact, budgets are ending prematurely and then health organizations are forced to see where they can reduce expenses.
The research examined the behavior of hundreds of doctors in 41 hospitals in the state of Texas, treating 160,000 patients. The research focused on the effects EMR software had on four kinds of heart conditions. The conclusion of the research showed that hospitals using EMR efficiently reduced by 15% the number medical malpractices.
The New York Times recently wrote of president Obama's plan to seriously push the National medical records project as part of his overall wish to make America's health system more efficient and less expensive. It is well known, that the absence of electronic medical records has fatal significance. Dr. David Brailer was quoted in the past saying: "we have to destroy the papers in the medical world, they are killing us". Dr. Brailer has been working on implementing EHR systems in the United States for many years.
The main goal of adoption EHR systems is to reduce the number of potential mistakes. Doctors and nurses are working hard enough as it is, around the clock, and they only have partial information about their patients. Some of the medical information is paper based and some is computerized, and therefore mistakes occur. EHR systems should provide effective tools in order to ease doctor's ability to control all the medical data of their patients. Doctors should not be over whelmed with excessive information and that information should have the ability to be easily transferred without mistakes. A substantial part of thousands of people that die every year in the United States because of medical mistakes could have been saved if only doctors would have accessed their medical data in a digital manner. Every person in the United States should have an electronic medical record. One may never know when this information can save his life.
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Nick Roggers
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Date: Wed, 5 May 2010 Time: 2:07 AM
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