| 'Paper kills,' electronic medical records save lives |
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Hurricane Katrina has been the loudest wake-up call so far for the need for electronic health records (EHRs), according to some prominent policy figures. Floods from the storm erased the medical records of many people in the central Gulf Coast because they were written on paper and stored in boxes in hospitals and physicians’ offices. Dr. David Brailer, national coordinator for health information technology at the Department of Health and Human Services, said EHRs will now be a part of all crisis response plans. “There was never a health IT component of the disaster recovery plan...but there will be,” he said yesterday at a conference that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Foundation hosted.
Brailer described the revelation that electronic medical files save lives as... Link to the full article at: Govhealthit.com |
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