Each year 200,000 people die from medical errors in American hospitals. There are a number of reasons for these mistakes, but everyone agrees the number would be much lower if doctors shared records. In this Internet age, we assume doctors anywhere can pull up our charts, but the truth is most have no way to do this.
At first glance, it might be an obvious conclusion that since many clinical practices use computers to record information and to look up past records, and since hospitals also use computers to look up information, these clinical practices must be exchanging data among themselves and among hospitals in the region. Continue Reading