Can electronic health records improve treatment for chronic conditions?
What are the prospects that electronic health records will improve care in chronic conditions such as diabetes or sleep apnea? Physicians must first recognize these conditions, be proactive in diagnosing them, and can then use records to help them to monitor and track their patients and help the patients to be involved in their treatment. We are hearing a lot about the importance of physicians’ using electronic health records (EHR) and electronic medical records (EMR). Funds to enable such systems are likely to be a part of the Obama administration’s program. Electronic records are record systems that can enable improvements in health care delivery, including for chronic disease management. But implementing these systems doesn’t happen just because of funds to buy them. Doctors need to adopt new methods of patient care. A disease registry is a special kind of record system. A disease registry lists all patients with a particular disease Imagine a sheet (as simple to do as a spread shee
