Inevitable Future of Change
In all honesty its just as easy for a criminal to break into an offsite storage of papered charts and steal information as it would to do it digitally. The big difference is the quantity of data stolen. With the advancement of technology it would be wiser to use it as it was intended e.g. reduce paper cost, storage fees, eliminate wrong patient information in another patients chart etc. The average hospital worker responsible for maintaining patient information (Medical Records)is the bottom of the bottom in comparison to the CEOs, Doctors and Nurses and yet is one of the most important personnel to a hospital to ensure that the correct information is in place with all others like it in regards to each patients visit history. The legalities of who can access records and why and for what reason needs addressing I'm sure but computing technology is not going away anytime soon and its better to embrace it head on instead of waiting till the last minute to jump on the bang wagon of EMR conversion.
