I used to work for an EHR vendor. Users don't drive features, hospital administrators and CMIOs[1] do. In general, we give hospitals the ability to get better reimbursement from insurance companies by embedding more detailed billing information in the patient's chart and documents. We also help shield hospitals from liability by helping add more details demanded by their lawyers. Information about the patient from healthcare providers for other healthcare providers runs a distant third.
If your old paper chart didn't get misfiled or fall behind the cabinet, almost everything in it was relevant to your care, because there wasn't enough hours in the day to record anything else. Now, it's a sea of compliance bullshit and autocompleted lies -- the unscrupulous practitioners insert multipage reports on tests that were never performed with just a few clicks. (I think the EHR vendors now also sell tools to detect that sort of fraud.) For users who ultimately want to provide care, dealing with electronic medical records is a nightmarish situation and it's leading to burnout at record rates.
1. Chief medical information officer --usually a doctor who became an expert EHR user and now decides what will work for doctors and what won't.
If your old paper chart didn't get misfiled or fall behind the cabinet, almost everything in it was relevant to your care, because there wasn't enough hours in the day to record anything else. Now, it's a sea of compliance bullshit and autocompleted lies -- the unscrupulous practitioners insert multipage reports on tests that were never performed with just a few clicks. (I think the EHR vendors now also sell tools to detect that sort of fraud.) For users who ultimately want to provide care, dealing with electronic medical records is a nightmarish situation and it's leading to burnout at record rates.
1. Chief medical information officer --usually a doctor who became an expert EHR user and now decides what will work for doctors and what won't.