It’s the third week of December 2013 already, and the Video of the Week (VOW) pick is this “silent movie” on the downside of using paper-based medical records, like many still keep in most developing and developed economies versus the merits of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs).
Health Information Management (HIM) / Medical Records (MR) Management practitioners in most developing and developed economies are far away from the turbulence In the United States, when health care providers are forced by mandatory legislation to transform medical records from paper-based to electronic. In this state of disquietness, the U.S Government provides incentives like monetary bonuses toward those who make the conversion early and fulfil a level of computer utilisation termed “meaningful use while for those who do not adopt EMRs by 2015, there will be disincentives.
This video illustrates a much less optimistic view about paper-based medical records and encourages the change showing that electronic records are more secure, that preventive measures could be better implemented electronically, and that health records could be shared across providers, thus avoiding duplication of testing and contesting that these assumptions are true and that medical quality could be improved while costs would decrease.
HIM / MR practitioners who have undergone this kind of transformation are the ones who can determine, testify and so conclude if (i) smaller, paper-based medical systems offered greater flexibility and efficiency than larger electronic systems, (ii) whether electronic records were more or less secure than paper records, and (iii) whether the theoretical benefits of an electronic record had not matched its actual performance, rather a performance that increases costs but detracts from clinical efficiencies and does nothing to improve patient outcomes.
Although this video is almost five (5) years old, I decided to use this video for the benefit of HIM / MR practitioners in developing countries where many may still be unaware about the adoption of EMRs as a new technology that may or may not be good enough to warrant an enthusiasm for change In health care and their everyday practice in medical records keeping.
References:
Allscripts.com/ 2008, Paperfree Healthcare, 22 February 2008, Youtube, viewed 13 December 2013, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jAH9hdF0xk>
