I ask myself, at the end of the day, would I go back to paper charts? The answer is no. Despite their downsides, I feel that the positives of EHRs outweigh the negatives. Older doctors just need to adapt to this new way of practicing medicine.
The Bottom Line
Clearly there is a range of opinion about the effect of electronic health records on our practices and our lives, with those opinions at least partly segregated by age. We are interested in your thoughts and plan to publish some of those thoughts in future columns, so please let us know at info@ehrpc.com. Thanks.
Dr. Notte is a family physician and clinical informaticist for Abington Memorial Hospital. He is a partner in EHR Practice Consultants, a firm that aids physicians in adopting electronic health records. Dr. Skolnik is associate director of the family medicine residency program at Abington (Pa.) Memorial Hospital and professor of family and community medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia. He is editor in chief of Redi-Reference Inc., a software company that creates mobile apps.