Don’t Ignore the Business Side When Digitizing Healthcare Records

The value of electronic health records by now is undeniable. Under a virtual federal mandate to digitize medical records by 2014, medical offices and institutions have been scurrying to convert their paper patient records— sometimes consuming as much real estate as clinical areas—to electronic form. EHR already has been demonstrating its value, making records quickly and easily available to emergency rooms and specialists and allowing analysts to more rapidly spot trends in the spread of disease and in medical care. Experience with the benefits of paperless records on the clinical side of operations should encourage medical facilities and institutions to extend those benefits to the business side.