The Pros And Cons Of Electronic Health Records

It is important to know that in our healthcare society today, electronic health records (EHRs) are useful tools. EHRs are the ability to exchange healthcare records electronically, which provides the patients with exceptional quality of care. These electronic tools allow doctors to access patients’ records faster and more efficiently as well as sharing patients’ health records with other physicians, which prevents duplicate testing to be performed. Therefore, it is important to understand that electronic health records improve data collection in the healthcare environment. For instance, EHRs improve the population’s overall healthcare and health outcomes by efficiently collecting data in a form that can be shared across multiple health care organizations and leveraged for
Some private practices do not have the means to pay for an expensive electronic health system. According to Menachemi & Collum (2011), “The costs of EHR adoption, implementation, and ongoing maintenance are compounded by the fact that many financial benefits of an EHR generally do not accrue to the provider, but rather to the third-party payers.” Another potential drawback is the disruption of workflows for medical staff, which causes temporary losses in productivity due to learning a brand new system, taking them a long while to learn. Next, is the risk of privacy violations, which is a drastic concern for patients due to the increasing amount of health information being electronic. In other words, there are concerns of people hacking into the system and stealing patients’ social security numbers and other important health information. Lastly, EHRs can cause data problems due to the overdependence of technology. For example, there are increased medical errors effecting patients’ health records causing misdiagnoses and