NewHealthEducation.com

Archive for February, 2011

Many doctors offices are required to have rooms full of filing cabinets. This is because they are required by law to maintain medical records for a period of up to 10 years. This means that every patient who walks through the door at any medical facility will be given a file in a file must be kept for an entire decade. When you think about this you can imagine how many files a doctor’s office will collect over a period of many years. This is why many people are pushing for connected healthcare via electronic records. Storing electronic records will not only conserve space but it will all so lighten the load for people who work in the medical field. Electronic medical records will allow doctors and hospitals as well as pharmacists and other members of the medical field to communicate with each other through a simple Internet application. This will make integrated healthcare a part of the normal process. Patients will have much more control over their own records and may even be provided access using a simple online interface.

Up until now this seemed like a pipe dream because people were far too concerned with safety issues. The HIPAA laws would not all-out for anything like this. This is because there were still many glitches and electronic medical records holdups that needed to be addressed. The largest concern was that patient records may be compromised and fall into the wrong hands. Fortunately with advancements in computer technology and security measures, electronic medical records seem to be something that is just around the corner. There will be many EMR vendors as well as many different types of EMR software’s to choose from. Larger facilities will probably have servers which are located right on property. Smaller facilities may choose to use off-site servers and possibly collocation hosting.