Electronic Health Records Are Critically Important For Healthcare Of All Americans......
I just watched House Congressional testimony on CSPAN3 of a wife of a judge that died in this meningitis outbreak that was caused by negligence by a compounding pharmacy in Mass. If her husband had a complete electronic medical record that could have been referred to by health professionals trying to determine what was wrong with him after he received the injection in question - they might have had some clues early on in his care with which to treat him with to prevent his dying.
I had a similar experience with my Mom and realized that Home Care professionals didn't have access to her hospital and physicians records and therefore they weren't able to treat her because they didn't know what my Mom encountered prior to their care.
It is important that an electronic medical record be generated for every patient and that this record should follow them through the system and must be able to be accessed by any health professional that is directly involved with that patient's care.
With no such record - there are gaps in care; there is significant duplication of effort by health professionals and inefficiencies in care that prevent health professionals from doing their job.
I know I've heard President Obama come out in favor of electronic records - I don't know where this is in the grand scheme of the Affordable Care Act - but we must provide support of this and the President and make sure that laws and regulations are written to allow all health care practitioners that have direct patient care responsibilities for a patient to have access to all of their records and that these records be of an electronic basis.
I know that there are HIPPA laws and patient confidentiality issues that might be clouding this issue. I am not advocating that anyone have access to a patient's electronic medical record. I am advocating that any health professional that is given direct responsibility to care for a particular patient have access to such records.
