Across the nation concerns about health-care quality and costs are growing. For the first time, both candidates aspiring to the nation's highest office are looking to greater reliance on electronic medical records as critical to any remedy.
In Indianapolis, they and the nation can see first-hand how significant a part of the solution electronic medical records can be, say Indiana University School of Medicine researcher-clinicians at the Regenstrief Institute. Regenstrief investigators have been working on and with electronic medical records since the infancy of the concept nearly 40 years ago.
Today the Regenstrief Medical Record System has a database of 9.6 million patients. It has given birth to the Indiana Network for Patient Care, the nation's only citywide health information exchange. This metropolitan system allows emergency department physicians, with the patient's permission, to view as a single virtual record all previous care at any of more than 25 hospitals, improving quality of care and the efficiency of delivery of that care.
Electronic medical records offer numerous advantages over paper records which are sometimes illegible and very often not where the patient is when he or she needs treatment. Because an electronic medical record allows the doctor to instantly see the patient's prior treatment, medication history and other details critical to care, errors decrease.