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Electronic records

work wonderfully

After reading the article on electronic medical records in Sunday's paper ("Study questions value of electronic records," Oct. 25), I just had to send in my experienced opinion on how wonderful electronic records are.

My hospital in Mobile changed to electronic records several years back. There was gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands by the older staff initially. We complained that it would take more time, etc.

Truth is, we were behaving like the old dog who doesn't want to learn new tricks. Some of us were scared we were too old and wouldn't be able to learn the system.

We were so wrong. Learning the system was easy. We discovered it was the best thing invented since cotton candy.

It prompts you to be more thorough in a shorter amount of time. It provides more privacy protection than any other method. And, due to the fact that a computer doesn't write illegibly (that's a human defect), it prevents mistakes.

The doctor can pull up an x-ray or EKG while talking to another doctor or a nurse in a different part of the hospital. We can pull up information on drugs we are unfamiliar with. We can pull up tests from three years ago to compare to tests run today.

All of these things can greatly improve patient safety.

Soon we will be totally paperless, which will save a tremendous amount of money, and those savings will trickle down to the patients. Not to mention that patient privacy will be top-notch.

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