Electronic medical/health records in primary care
Citation: Holroyd-Leduc JM, Lorenzetti D, Straus SE, et al. The impact of the electronic medical record on structure, process, and outcomes within primary care: a systematic review of the evidence. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 2011; 18: 732-7
What is this? The COVID-19 pandemic is placing a strain on healthcare services. Existing research on the use of electronic medical records (EMR) or electronic health records (EHR) might provide information to help policy makers with this.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for research evaluating EMR/EHR in primary care. They restricted their search to articles published in English between January 1998 and January 2010. They identified 30 studies (mostly observational and qualitative studies), which assessed the impact of EMR/EHR on healthcare structure (5 studies), process (21) and outcomes (4).
What was found: The impacts of EMR/EHR on health outcomes and healthcare costs are uncertain, but the research in this review suggests that it impacts only marginally to improved health.
EMR were preferred over paper-based records for legibility and accessibility.