Are EMRs alleviating preventable medical errors yet?

Healthcare IT News: Health systems have made significant investments in digitizing their operations primarily through the deployment of the electronic medical record (EMR). The EMR platform, in fact, holds the promise of being the foundation to address the many clinical shortfalls documented in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) 1999 landmark report “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System.”  

The report identified that as many as 98,000 people die in U.S. hospitals each year as a result of preventable medical errors. The source for a significant percentage of these errors is the lack of appropriate patient data available to clinicians at the point of patient care.

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