Electronic and Paper Medical Records
Electronic medical records (EMRs) are digital health records that contain information and notes about patients that clinicians collect to be utilized by health providers for diagnosing illnesses and treatment. They include digital forms of paper charts and have the patient’s treatment and medical history in a single practice. The two pros of EMRs are accessibility and real-time records (Ventura et al., 2011). With EMRs, health providers can access, identify, and review a patient’s medical history easily from the digitalized records. The information is available to be accessed by authorized personnel from any location. This allows the medical team to attend to a patient to coordinate care quickly and conveniently, especially for patients who have complex issues or emergency cases. Another crucial advantage is the availability of real-time records of things such as diagnosis, test results, or doctor’s notes. The availability allows practitioners from different departments or specialties to view the records simultaneously and coordinate care. The disadvantages of EMRs are the high costs of upfront acquisitions, lost productivity when learning the system and maintenance costs.
Paper medical records (PMRs) also contain information about the medical record of patients but in the form of documents. The pros of PMRs are the ease of use whereby health providers obtain information from files, examine previous medical charts and notes, and write new observations (Hedges, 2020). The data is clear, and one does not need to be tech-savvy to obtain information. Another advantage is the physicality where nurses do not need to use keywords to search through databases causing slowness, and the found data can seamlessly be passed from one provider to the next. The cons are the lack of storage scalability whereby a physical space with controlled temperature is needed to store information to ensure integrity. Also, PMRs have limited security with no backups, and patient information cannot be discovered.
References
Hedges, L. (2020). The pros and cons of paper medical records. Software Advice. Retrieved from https://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/pros-cons-paper-charts/
Ventura, M. L., Battan, A. M., Zorloni, C., Abbiati, L., Colombo, M., Farina, S., & Tagliabue, P. (2011). The electronic medical record: pros and cons. The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, 24(sup1), 163-166.