[thaumasiotes]

Private industry is already worse than the older system of keeping notes with pen and paper. (Source: my mother operated her own medical practice and applied for a government subsidy to switch over to electronic medical records, then complained about how it reduced the functioning of her practice.)

[htechenjoyer]

Is it? There's trade-offs of course with everything. There's certainly many aspects in which a medical practice only using pen and paper is worse. How about transferring records to other institutions? Or taking your work home with you? Do you want to lug boxes of records home which may get lost (HIPAA breach) so that you can finish up your notes at home? What about making copies for a patients right to access? What about auditing changes or access to the record to enforce data security, integrity, and compliance?

What's the timeline of evaluation of reducing the functioning of her practice? If it was just a recent change then I would expect growing pains. I have many close personal relationships with healthcare workers and when their electronic health record system is down, having to use pen and paper leads to drastically worse functioning within their job. So the same claim but in the opposite direction. The reality is doing something you're not used to is harder.

[redsoundbanner]

Why was the government subsidizing that?

[cfu28]

Probably as part of the meaningful use policy in the US. Early adaptors were initially incentivized to move to EMRs off paper charts.

Today the incentive no longer exists. Instead theres a penalty in the form of reduced Medicare/medicaid reimbursement for practices that don’t comply.

[redsoundbanner]

Great answer. Thanks for not just downvoting me.

[thaumasiotes]

In what sense is that an answer to "why were they doing that?" The entirety of the answer does nothing but give a name to the policy. "Why" would usually be understood as a question about the reasons behind the policy.

"The government was subsidizing the abandonment of paper medical records because they had a program in place to do that" is something you knew before you asked the question.

[thaumasiotes]

They decided that medical records should be electronic rather than paper. Why do they do the other things they do?