On the (Electronic Medical) Records

To VCRs and phones with cords, add this: color-tabbed folders at the doctor’s office. Because in Minnesota, at least, paper medical records are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

Replacing the paper-laden folder is an electronic medical record (EMR). On the surface, the change seems inconsequential. Instead of using pens and paper, doctors and nurses use keyboards and computer files, and the information they record is the same. “But once medical staff start using EMRs, they never want to see paper again,” says Eric Westberg, a doctor with Glacial Ridge Health System in Glenwood, which adopted EMRs in 2007.

Why?

EMRs clearly improve patient care—and that, Westberg says, is why EMRs are here to stay. Paul Kleeberg, a physician who was heavily involved in the system-wide switch to EMRs at Minneapolis-based Allina Hospitals and Clinics, says that with a patient’s EMR readily available in every clinic and hospital room, “doctors and nurses have to spend a whole lot less time looking for vital information, which is especially important when seeing a patient for the first time or in an emergency situation.” EMRs also reduce prescription errors based on bad handwriting. And when doctors fill out a prescription electronically, the EMR program automatically relates it to the rest of the patient’s record and alerts the doctor to any potential misdosing, allergy, or medication interactions.

For Kevin Pallatao, vice president for patient care systems at HealthPartners, the benefit of EMRs goes beyond better patient care. “Patients typically retain about 20 percent of what they hear in an exam room,” he says. “By having access to their own records on line, along with easy-to-understand explanations of the information in the records, they can participate a lot more in their own care.”

“My patients love the fact that I can [pull up] their x-rays in any part of the clinic,” Westberg says. And if patients see another doctor in that system, they don’t have to remember every detail of their medical history or lug around copies of paper records.

Health care providers also directly benefit from EMRs. Reports don’t pile up and clog a records-retrieval system, and when doctors and nurses enter data directly into an EMR, they eliminate transcription errors. They also save a lot of money. Pallatao estimates that since 2005, when HealthPartners’ lab communications went paperless, the company has saved around $4.2 million in postage and other expenses related to sending out results on paper.