Limited access to electronic health records in the US puts patients at risk, according to medical expert

This appeared in The Millennial Source

The lack of hospital-to-hospital communication through database systems can lead to a whole host of problems accessing patient data and knowing what treatment to provide.

America’s healthcare system has the reputation of being one of the most complicated in the world.

In February 2009, as part of a push to modernize the healthcare system, the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act was enacted to centralize Electronic Health Records (EHR) throughout the country. This pushed hospitals to update their pen-and-paper record system to a more centralized EHR. While many of these hospitals have their own EHR system, problems often arise when one hospital needs to access the records of someone who was a patient at another.

TMS spoke to Dr. James Hamilton, Jr., an American College of Surgeons Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Bariatric Surgery Division at the University of Kansas Medical Center, about his process accessing data across hospitals.

Dr. Hamilton works at four different hospitals in Kansas, three run by the University of Kansas Health System as well as Stormont Vail Healthcare, a separate hospital.