Electronic Medical Records and Patient Safety

Electronic medical record (EMR) systems and electronic health records (EHR) have been purported to reduce patient mortality, reduce medical errors, increase health care savings and improve health.  This appears, in part, to be a result of decreased medication errors that could result in adverse drug reactions (ADRs).  One benefit is that electronic prescribing helps to save lives.  Could it be that there is less of a problem in reading the physicians' poor hand writing?


A study published in the Journal of Political Economy stated that a 10% increase in the use of electronic records in hospitals would save 16 newborns for every 100,000 live births.  This would result in the saving of 6,400 infants per year in the US.


According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2011, 57% of office-based physicians had EMR systems.

Adoption of EMR/EHR systems by office-based physicians has increased

According to a 2009 Harvard School of Public Health press release, the most commonly cited barriers to adoption of these systems were found to be:

• inadequate capital for purchase (73%)

• concerns about maintenance costs (44%)

• resistance from physicians (36%)

• unclear return on investment (32%)

• lack of staff with adequate IT expertise (30%)

The press release was based on an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  The first author of the NEJM article gave an interview discuss EHR which can be viewed here.