Family Doctors Will Keep Electronic Medical Records

Family Doctors Will Keep Electronic Medical Records.
More than two-thirds of dynasty doctors now use electronic vigorousness records, and the percentage doing so doubled between 2005 and 2011, a untrodden study finds. If the trend continues, 80 percent of family doctors - the largest categorize of primary care physicians - will be using electronic records by 2013, the researchers predicted. The findings provision "some encouragement that we have passed a critical threshold," said workroom author Dr Andrew Bazemore, director of the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Primary Care, in Washington, DC "The significant preponderance of primary care practitioners appear to be using digital medical records in some contrive or fashion".

The promises of electronic record-keeping include improved medical tribulation and long-term savings. However, many doctors were slow to adopt these records because of the turned on cost and the complexity of converting paper files. There were also privacy concerns. "We are not there yet," Bazemore added. "More exert oneself is needed, including better information from all of the states".

The Obama delivery has offered incentives to doctors who adopt electronic health records, and penalties to those who do not. For the study, researchers mined two resident data sets to see how many family doctors were using electronic robustness records, how this number changed over time, and how it compared to use by specialists. Their findings appear in the January-February emergence of the Annals of Family Medicine.

Nationally, 68 percent of family doctors were using electronic fitness records in 2011, they found. Rates varied by state, with a low of about 47 percent in North Dakota and a excessive of nearly 95 percent in Utah. Dr Michael Oppenheim, sinfulness president and chief medical information officer for North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System in Great Neck, NY, said electronic record-keeping streamlines medical care.