CERGAS Seminar "What Should We Expect from Electronic Medical Records? An Organizational Perspective"

Electronic Medical Records (EMR) have been promoted around the world as a key to improving both the quality and value of health care. Yet implementation in some countries has been an expensive failure, and in the United States the difficulties of coping with the EMR are now widely blamed for an epidemic of physician "burnout." EMRs may be "transforming health care," but with results that are not so positive.

This talk will suggest that it is time for health care policy and management scholars to re-think how the many goals that people claim could be met with EMRs fit into the organizational reality of medical care. EMRs are often promoted as a way to transform medical care by providing far more information to care providers. Yet in normal organizations, coordination is based on a division of labor so that each participant pays attention to only a limited part of the tasks. Can EMRs really change that? Can caregivers cope with more information? Can algorithms replace the division of labor? Can the benefits of documentation justify the burdens? What do doctors and patients actually want from EMRs? Professor White will raise these and other questions and hope to learn from the discussion