The objective was to assess use of a physician handoff tool embedded in the electronic medical record by nurses and other non-physicians. We administered a survey to nurses, physical therapists, discharge planners, social workers, and others to assess integration into daily practice, usefulness, and accuracy of the handoff tool. 231 individuals (61% response) participated. 60% used the tool oft...

Giaedi argues that employing an electronic medical record system may be the one solution that will addresses almost all problems. This is true, but in developing countries, most of the obstacles lie against preparing the health system for electronic services. In other words, the electronic health system has the potential to provide solutions to a lot of problems only if it works, and it works o...

Poor inpatient colonoscopy preparations can provide multiple challenges to healthcare providers and patients alike. Poor preparations can make the colonoscopy difficult to perform, and can require the procedure to be repeated. This can in turn lead to greater costs, longer length of stays, less patient satisfaction and worse outcomes. The aim of this quality improvement project was to decrease ...

In summary, providers and vendors alike have made great strides in EMR adoption among physicians in large-scale ambulatory practices. However, there is still work to be done in the areas of physician use, adoption obstacles, workflow and physician satisfaction. As vendors continue to enhance EMR technology, advance workflow and solve challenges with integration and physician acceptance, adoptio...

As the use of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) becomes more widespread, so does the need to search and provide effective information discovery on them. Information discovery methods will allow practitioners and other healthcare stakeholders to locate relevant pieces of information in the growing corpus of available EMRs. The success of Web search engines has shown that keyword queries are a us...

Building upon a security analysis of the Dutch electronic patient record system, this paper describes an approach to construct a fully decentralized patient record system, using controlled disclosure of references to medical records. This paper identifies several paths that can be used to disclose references. Contrary to many existing national-scale system designs, our approach avoids centraliz...

Outpatient wound center facility reimbursement for Medicare beneficiaries can be a challenge to determine and obtain. To compare methods of calculating facility service levels for outpatient wound centers and to demonstrate the advantages of an acuity-based billing system (one that incorporates components of facility work that is non-reimbursable by procedure codes and that represents an activi...

Many Veterans Affairs physicians are familiar with the steady stream of reminders generated by our electronic medical record system to order laboratory and screening tests. These reminders help clinicians meet guidelines and performance targets for screening and prevention. However, the article by Virani and colleagues demonstrating substantial overuse of repeated lipid testing in a Veterans Af...