> If the notes are relevant/useful and can only be entered by a doctor My father's secretary has done it for 20 years. Now she does less, liability has decreas

> If the notes are relevant/useful and can only be entered by a doctor My father's secretary has done it for 20 years. Now she does less, liability has decreased slightly, my father works longer hours and sleeps less while seeing the same amount of patients. All in all, a big win for everyone except the doctors and patients. What I don't think people are realizing is that the data DOES exist. It just isn't entered into a central electronic database. They already took notes. Now they have to write them twice. It's not a bad thing that they are centrally located, but from watching my father's life change since this happened, I struggle to see how it benefits patients. From my side, I have epilepsy. When I was younger, I went to see a different doctor, and the physical MRI was sent between hospitals. The images and accompanying notes were misread, and they thought I had a brand new brain tumor. Not exactly awesome to hear at the ripe old age of 14. Had EMR existed, that mistake would be much less likely to have happened. It obviously CAN be beneficial. On the flip side, since this legislation, I don't see my neurologist anymore. I go every 6 months to get a "checkup". Which really means visiting the nurse practitioner to re-up my prescriptions. Since my epilepsy is stable (and I've known him 20 years), it's a time saver for both of us to just fake the appointment. I can't complain too much as it's a time saver for me as well, but the legislation doesn't seem to be in my medical best interests in that my doctor is willing to take that shortcut. I used to have to fight to see him less frequently (taking days off work to strap electrodes to my head or sit in a tube can be draining on the vacation/sick days).