Using Medical Record Systems And How Electronically Stored Data Can Overcome Each Limitation

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2. Describe 4 limitations to traditional (paper-based) medical record systems and discuss how electronically stored data can overcome each limitation. Pg 50. a) Pragmatic and logistical issues: Can I find the data when I need them? Can I find the medical record in which they are recorded? Can I find the data within the record? Can I find what I need quickly? Can I read and interpret the data once I find them? Can I update the data reliability with new observations in a form consistent with the requirements for future access by me or other people? The patient’s paper chart may be unavailable when the health care professional needs it. It may be in use by someone else at another location; it may have been misplaced despite the…show more content…
When a chart is unavailable, the health care professional still must provide patient care. Thus, providers make do without past data, basing their decisions instead on what the patient can tell them and on what their examination reveals. They then write a note for inclusion in the chart—when the chart is located. In a large institution with thousands of medical records, it is not surprising that such loose notes often fail to make it to the patient’s chart or are filed out of sequence so that the actual chronology of management is disrupted in the record. When patients who have chronic or frequent diseases are seen over months or years, their records grow so large that the charts must be broken up into multiple volumes. When a hospital clinic or emergency room orders the patient’s chart, only the most recent volume typically is provided. Old but pertinent data may be in early volumes that are stored offsite or are otherwise unavailable. Alternatively, an early volume may be mistaken for the most recent volume, misleading its users and resulting in documents being inserted out of sequence.pg 392 inaccessibility/unavailability. In contrast, many users, including patients, can read the same electronic record at once. So it is never unavailable. With today’s secure networks, clinicians and patients can access a patient’s EHR from
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