In the United States, medical information about patients traditionally has been recorded and stored on paper forms. However, there are efforts to persuade doctors to adopt electronic medical record systems in which information about patients is stored in electronic databases rather than on paper. It is argued that storing patients' medical records in electronic databases has several advantages over traditional paper-based record keeping.
Reducing Costs
First, the use of electronic records can help reduce costs by saving money on storing and transferring medical records. While paper records require a significant amount of storage space, electronic medical records take up virtually no space. Moreover, by having patients' records computerized in databases, doctors can easily access the records from almost anywhere and can easily duplicate and transfer them when necessary. This costs much less than copying, faxing, or transporting paper records from one location to another.
Preventing Errors
Second, electronic medical records are crucial to reducing the chances of medical errors. Illegible handwriting, improper transcription of data, and nonstandard organization of paper records have caused errors that in some cases have had serious consequences for the patients' health. In contrast, electronic records are associated with standardization of forms and legible computer fonts and thus minimize the possibility of human error.
Aiding Research
Third, electronic medical records can greatly aid medical research by making it possible to gather large amounts of data from patient records. It is often impractical, impossible, or prohibitively expensive to manually go through thousands of patients’ paper records housed in doctors' offices. However, with the existence of electronic medical records, it would be simple to draw out the needed information from the medical databases because the databases are already formatted for data collection. Once in the electronic system, the records could be accessed from any research location.
The decision of whether it’s viable to completely replace paperwork with electronic systems to do medical records has been a popular debatable topic in the US. The article states that there are several advantages that doctors can gain by doing so. However, the lecture uses specific examples to critique that points made by the article just doesn’t hold to be true.
First, the point made by the article is about cost savings. It mentions that the cost of transporting and saving physical papers can be largely accommodated by doing it electronically. In contrast, the lecture refutes the idea by pointing out that most of the hospitals, including the ones that do make medical records online, still uses paper records at the same time as a backup. In other words, there’s only a little or even no savings that the movement of replacing an online system with paper can bring.
Another point worth mentioning is that the article claims that electric medical records can eliminate errors caused by an unstandardized form of recording, improper transcription of information, and non-legible handwriting. Those points don’t hold to be true because, as the lecture suggested, doctors are still using paper and pen when diagnosing patients. The online records are copied from the paper afterward by other employees in the hospital, therefore, the errors can still occur if the doctors have made mistakes prior.
Lastly, the advantage that medical researchers can perceive is not likely to be as significant as what’s been depicted in the article. The reasons being that those medical records are considered as the privacy of the patients, therefore, in order for researchers to access the online data, complicated processes have to be done. Even with that, the patients still have the full right to decide whether his or her personal information can be used for purposes other than to diagnose him or herself according to the US law.
In conclusion, although the advantages provided by the article might seem very appealing at first, the fact that paperwork is not completely disappeared in the process of how hospitals examine patients really makes it impractical. Not to mention the complicated laws that actually made it hard for researchers to access, rather than what’s been said in the article.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-07-02 | Vivian Chang | 80 | view |
| 2023-07-02 | YasamanEsml | 80 | view |
| 2022-12-14 | shekoo20 | 80 | view |
| 2022-12-07 | HSNDEK | 73 | view |
| 2022-09-12 | sarah1378 | 73 | view |
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Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, first, however, if, lastly, really, so, still, therefore, in conclusion, in contrast, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 10.4613686534 172% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 5.04856512141 158% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 7.30242825607 82% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 12.0772626932 124% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 22.412803532 120% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 46.0 30.3222958057 152% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 5.01324503311 100% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1943.0 1373.03311258 142% => OK
No of words: 375.0 270.72406181 139% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.18133333333 5.08290768461 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.40055868397 4.04702891845 109% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.78544279345 2.5805825403 108% => OK
Unique words: 199.0 145.348785872 137% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.530666666667 0.540411800872 98% => OK
syllable_count: 603.0 419.366225166 144% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 3.25607064018 61% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.23620309051 134% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 1.25165562914 160% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 2.5761589404 155% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 13.0662251656 115% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 21.2450331126 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.7844228587 49.2860985944 95% => OK
Chars per sentence: 129.533333333 110.228320801 118% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.0 21.698381199 115% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.33333333333 7.06452816374 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.09492273731 122% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 4.33554083885 138% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 4.45695364238 90% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.27373068433 117% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.194019804501 0.272083759551 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0642451458223 0.0996497079465 64% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0401039209322 0.0662205650399 61% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.105756980669 0.162205337803 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0327009936395 0.0443174109184 74% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 13.3589403974 116% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 53.8541721854 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 11.0289183223 118% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.06 12.2367328918 107% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.21 8.42419426049 109% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 63.6247240618 162% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 10.7273730684 79% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 10.498013245 114% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.2008830022 80% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 20 minutes.
Rates: 85.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 25.5 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.