A survey that's about to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine found two interesting things:1) Doctors using electronic health records overwhelmingly found they improve the quality and timeliness of care. In other words, fewer people died, and folks were treated faster.2) Fewer than one-in-five doctors are using electronic health records.This wouldn't fly in any other industry. The problem is, in health care, about half of the country's doctors have practices of fewer than three people, and small practices often lack the profit margins and personnel to do much in the way of infrastructure investment. So people die, and care is more expensive, and everything takes longer, and we sort of putter along like this, because health care is complicated, and changing things is hard.Try to imagine a scenario in which a bank that uses paper records still survived. Give it a shot. Imagine potential customers walking in the door, and the bank manager opening a massive ledger book to page 2,012, and that bank not going out of business. That's basically what's happening in medicine. The difference is that rather than it merely being your money which relies on accurate penmanship and high quality paper stock, it's your health, and even your life. YEAH, THEY'RE GREAT. NO, WE DON'T USE THEM.
A survey that's about to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine found two interesting things:1) Doctors using electronic health records overwhelmingly found they improve the quality and timeliness of care. In other words, fewer people died, and folks were treated faster.2) Fewer than one-in-five doctors are using electronic health records.This wouldn't fly in any other industry. The problem is, in health care, about half of the country's doctors have practices of fewer than three people, and small practices often lack the profit margins and personnel to do much in the way of infrastructure investment. So people die, and care is more expensive, and everything takes longer, and we sort of putter along like this, because health care is complicated, and changing things is hard.Try to imagine a scenario in which a bank that uses paper records still survived. Give it a shot. Imagine potential customers walking in the door, and the bank manager opening a massive ledger book to page 2,012, and that bank not going out of business. That's basically what's happening in medicine. The difference is that rather than it merely being your money which relies on accurate penmanship and high quality paper stock, it's your health, and even your life. 
