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Electronic health records (EHR) are digital computerized versions of patient information on paper. It can perform various tasks that help provide medical care following clinical practice standards. By granting each partner full access to the patient’s medical history, EHR enables the storage of data on a patient’s history, diagnoses, and drugs used while enhancing communication between doctors (Kronk et al., 2021). However, given that Congress authorized more than $50 billion for the switch from paper to electronic records, the implementation of EHR has some drawbacks that raise doubts about the system’s viability.
Most EHR issues revolve around acquiring comprehensive and accurate medical data for use in court. This most frequently happens in some litigation where a party requests discovery and production of evidence from the record. The custodian must decide whether to “release the record, what portions of the record should be released, and whether the record is admissible in evidence” (Paterick et al., 2018, p. 559). A further step is necessary to assure identity verification by electronic signatures for authentication if permitted by state and federal rules.
Another problem arises in using the EHR in litigation, such as printing records for evidence. Regulations for control and disposal must be followed, and consideration must be made to where EHRs may be produced (Paterick et al., 2018). As a result, converting paper documents to electronic formats is useless because the court must still print, albeit very laboriously. This procedure can lengthen the trial considerably and complicate the court’s work.
In conclusion, the implementation of the EHR system provides several benefits for the medical industry, including access to comprehensive patient information, the capability for clinicians to simultaneously monitor the course of therapy, and others. However, litigation has a number of issues, chief among them the fact that the record must still be printed, contributing to the expense and adding to the complexity of the procedure.
References
Kronk, C. A., Everhart, A. R., Ashley, F., Thompson, H. M., Schall, T. E., Goetz, T. G., Hiatt, L., Derrick, Z., Queen, R., Ram, A., Guthman, E. M., Danforth, O. M., Lett, E., Potter, E., Sun, S. D., Marshall, Z., & Karnoski, R. (2021). Transgender data collection in the electronic health record: Current concepts and issues. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 29(2), 271–284.
Paterick, Z. R., Patel, N. J., Ngo, E., Chandrasekaran, K., Jamil Tajik, A., & Paterick, T. E. (2018). Medical liability in the electronic medical records era. Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 31(4), 558–561.
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