EMR data sharing still a major issue

While it's tough getting doctors wired, that's far from the only issue in making electronic medical records as useful and powerful a tool as they could be. Even when hospitals succeed at getting physicians to adopt EMR technology, those records usually don't "talk" to records created by other health systems and hospitals, says Paul Levy, CEO of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in a recent blog entry. As he notes, the situation in Boston is a perfect example. His medical center and another prominent organization, Partners Health System, have both managed to get 85 percent of their physicians to begin using EMR systems. But as he notes, 27 percent of the patients who are seen at either BIDMC and Brigham or Women's Hospital are also seen by Partners. And when they are, there's no way for the Partners physicians to open up the other facility's EMRs. To make real progress with EMRs, it will be critical to figure out how to connect such systems between hospitals, he says.

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