Electronic medical records or electronic health records — EMR or EHR — have been shoved down our throats since the early 2000s and pretty much all doctors hate them. We were sold a promise that the EMRs were going to make life better for the patients and the doctors. The EMRs were going to make healthcare more streamlined and efficient while making the patients healthier. They were going to cut down on medical errors and redundancy in ordering. Almost none of this has occurred with electronic records.
Electronic health records were being developed as early as the 1970s but mainly on large mainframe computers and for use in medical research institutions. As personal computers became practical in the 1990s, the push began to move healthcare toward electronic records. By the 2000s we were being told that electronic medical records were not only desired but soon would be required and if you didn’t adopt this new method then you would be hit with fines.
Early on it sounded like a great idea. Plug your clinic or hospital into an EMR and you would make healthcare better and safer for everyone. By putting in patient medication lists and allergies it would mean fewer prescription errors. Having lists of all the patient’s previous diagnoses and surgeries would make us better-informed clinicians. Having quick, easy access to a patient’s historical lab results and vital signs meant we could more easily tell if the patient was in better health or worse on any given day we were seeing them. We wouldn’t have to re-order tests that were just done by another facility because they would be right at our fingertips. The EMR was going to be so easy to use that doctors were going to be able to see more patients with less hassle. We were going to have more time in our day. The biggest lie sold to doctors was that the systems would all talk to each other across the country.
