Why Dont More Hospitals Use Electronic Health Records? – Businessweek

Why Dont More Hospitals Use Electronic Health Records? – Businessweek.

When people in health care talk about the promise of digital medical records, they often point to Kaiser Permanente. The Epic system is integral to America’s largest nonprofit health maintenance organization. The Oakland-based operation’s doctors use it for everything from scheduling appointments to ordering lab results. Kaiser’s members seem to like it, too. They can log into the system, check their medical records, and correspond with doctors via Epic’s secure e-mail system

As of March, 2012, 1.2 million emails are being sent to physicians every month, as of May, 17 % of visits to kp.org are coming from mobile device, where people can get their test results, email their doctors, and make, view, cancel appointments.

This is what an EHR does for patients, in addition to what it does for nurses and doctors.