electronic medical records

Medical Economics reports that Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is hindering the ability of healthcare providers to coordinate care, including with patients who want family and friends to have access to their health records: "According to a report in the January 22/29 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), privacy and security regulations aren’t keeping up with the convergence of technology and an increased emphasis on care coordination." 

The RAND Corporation, which was commissioned by the American Medical Association to identify the factors that influence physicians' professional satisfaction, found that those physicians surveyed do not want to go back to paper charting. But they are reporting several issues with the deployment of electronic health records: "Among the key findings of the study was how electronic health records have affected physician professional satisfaction. Those surveyed expressed concern that current electronic health record technology interferes with face-to-face discussions with patients, requires physicians to spend too much time performing clerical work and degrades the accuracy of medical records by encouraging template-generated notes. In addition, doctors worry that the technology has been more costly than expected and different types of electronic health records are unable to 'talk' to each other, preventing the transmission of patient medical information when it is needed."