Search | Search by Center | Search by Source | Keywords in Title
Hurdle JF. Can the electronic medical record improve geriatric care? Geriatric Times. 2004 Apr 1; 5(2):25-26.
The proposition that electronic medical records (EMRs) could influence the quality of health care for elderly patients may seem either inevitable or a pipe dream, depending perhaps on when and how one trained. Most physicians and other health care professionals use computers on a regular basis. The entire infrastructure of basic services on which we all depend, from transportation networks to the food supply, are run largely by computer systems. They are systems where the same basic operations are performed repetitively on a large scale, with emphasis on the regular delivery of some product. The consumer and the producer of these services share the same business model, with well-understood and easily modeled operating economics. Health care is a basic societal service and is no less fundamental than food or water. Yet historically, it has been chronically under-computerized (Hayes, 1996).The reasons for this underutilization of computers in health care are many, but they reduce to a common theme: There has been a fundamental mismatch between what providers expect from computers and what computer systems can actually deliver