I was recently posed the question as to whether I thought electronic medical records will improve healthcare data collection. As an advocate for technological innovation, I believe that electronic medical records do have the potential to improve data collection. There are some hurdles to overcome, however, in order for that potential to be fully realized. My day-to-day interactions with various healthcare leadership groups have made me aware of the multitude of pressures they face requiring accurate data to make well-informed decisions. Strome states in the book, Healthcare Analytics for Quality and Performance Improvement that, “improving quality in a modern health care organization to the extent and at the pace necessary without the benefit of the information derived from Health Information Technology would be an onerous task” (Strome, 2013, p.7). Electronic medical records can put the information into leaderships’ hands. However, implementation of an EMR is not an end, necessarily, but the means. The roadblocks to effective utilization of these systems, in my opinion, include a health system’s ability to manage the voluminous data collected, to be able to identify and focus on the key data elements necessary for measure, and the ability to share this information across the health care system.

Strome, T. L. (2013). Healthcare analytics for quality and performance improvement. John Wiley & Sons.