by Mona Gallagher

Created on: November 17, 2008   Last Updated: January 05, 2009

Since the personal computer came of age, doctors and medical facilities have digitized medical information for patients, insurance records, and financial information. The Internet followed close behind, bringing EMRs (electronic medical records) and health information technology transitioned to the present environment of digital record keeping.

EMRs have been around for about thirty years, but as of 2007, only about one fourth of office-based physicians have made the transition. Proposed changes in the health care industry, no doubt, will bring about a large movement over to EMRs and EHRs.

EMRs and EHRs are medical and health records that integrate medical and financial information within medical networks and facilities. The main advantages are accuracy, efficiency and cost savings for medical offices and while the principle is sound and in line with automated health information technology, it would be unfair to say that EMRs have passed every hurdle for security.

The difference between EMRs and EHRs:

EMRs are provider order entry systems. They provide patient registration information, insurance, and financial records of claims and payments. They may also include patient appointments, schedules, and procedural codes, diagnostic codes and other information for practice management and insurance providers.

EHRs are a patient's individual medical records and they coordinate storage and retrieval of an individual's medical records aided by a computer. These records may be accessed from a network and a variety of sources. This type of access insures that the latest medical, lab, and current medication records are current and thus can reduce errors.

EHRs provide an efficient method for doctors in filling out medical charts that include diagnoses, medications, or laboratory tests orders. Most systems interface with a PDA or computer notepad. Human error is still a possibility but is reduced substantially by current and updated records retrieval.

PHRs are personal health records that patients store and access on the Internet.

Cost savings and efficiency advantages of EMRs:

One great feature of EMRs is that they have the ability to interface with existing software. This feature eliminates the long process of data migration from the existing database to the new and allows automatically populates fields in the EMR software. It also cuts down on training time and many vendors have a dedicated customer service to support IT and/or user problems.

The automated process of patient scheduling,

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