Electronic Medical Records for Burn Centers: What Do Users Need?

摘要

In its influential 2001 report, Crossing the Quality Chasm, the U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) proposed: "IT [information technology] must play a central role in the redesign of the health care system if a substantial improvement in health care quality is to be achieved in the coming decade." The U.S. government then launched a campaign (as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009), Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, to support implementation and meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs). That campaign is now underway. Are we headed in the right direction? On April 27, 2012, several users participated in a Luncheon Symposium at the American Burn Association annual meeting in Seattle. The purpose of the symposium was to discuss the use of the EHR in burn centers. What ensued was a thorough discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the current generation of EHRs, and of the desirable features of the next generation. We would like to summarize our impressions from that meeting.