Complaints about the electronic health record thus far have been very minor. However, HealthMaker and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, explains why he thinks there may be a second round of requests for improvements.
There are lots of complaints that we don't have products that the user likes. The user mainly being doctors and nurses and others, and that we're going to need that there's plenty of room for improvement. At the moment, there's lots and lots of hustle just to get the electronic records in doctors and hospitals' offices, I expect that wave too after we're, and we're pretty close to saturation, certainly in the doctors office, 80% of doctors are using electronic health records.
The next wave is going to be we really need better, better electronic health records that work better, that are easier to use so as your experience isn't the norm which is you know you're going to the office and the doctor is stuck at the computer because he/she is got to enter all this information, that obviously cannot be the way for the future.
Ezekiel Emanuel is a Senior Fellow at American Progress, professor at the Diane and Robert Levy University, and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a breast oncologist.
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