A thoughtful article in the April 17 2008 NEJM co-authored by Jerome Groopman, MD ("How Doctors Think" and other insightful works), warns of the danger that EHR's with their templates, canned language and copy-paste abilities risk making the medical record much less readable. More importantly, the process of recording a history in an EHR could so restrict our listening, querying and thinking during the encounter with the patient that we may be more likely to miss the appropriate diagnosis or plan for the patient.
While the authors insist that they agree that EHR's have many benefits, they warn us to be wary of letting technology and "efficiency" become barriers to good care.
From the concluding paragraph: "as medicine incorporates new technology, its focus should remain on interaction between the sick and the healer."
As TriCounty moves ahead with EHR, these are warnings we should keep in mind.
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