For years controversy has surrounded whether electronic medical records (EMR) would lead to increased patient safety, cut medical errors, and reduce healthcare costs.

Why do physicians seem resistant to the use of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs)? The answer is there are at least three barriers to adoption of EMRs that healthcare policy wonks seem to ignore that must be cured.

A new study led by Paul Sierzenski, MD, RDMS, of Christiana Care Health System, Wilmington, DE, discusses the benefits gained from providing health care workers with immediate access to patient medical records during a mass casualty incident.

Massachusetts introduces a bill consisting of 2 parts: to adopt electronic medical records and ban pharmaceutical marketing gifts.

Google, the California search-engine company, and the Cleveland Clinic — an Ohio medical institution with a reputation for quality care — recently announced they will collaborate on a pilot program to store patient records online.

Leon Medical Center has begun installing a $6 million electronic medical records system in its five Medicare health clinics in Miami-Dade County.

Electronic medical records and outreach programs of e-mail messages, letters and phone calls to patients and their primary care providers after a bone fracture can dramatically improve the diagnosis and management of the patients’ osteoporosis, according to a Kaiser Permanente study in the September issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Storing essential medical information under the skin could be possible as now a grain size device implanted with a needle could give emergency room doctors quick access to the records of chronically ill patients.