Why Electronic Medical Records Matter

Remember the Joplin Tornado? This is going to be my go-to anecdote for the foreseeable future.

“I knew that they would want to know my medications, dosages and what tests had been done, and I knew that I couldn’t remember all of it. The doctors in Springfield were able to pull up my records and ask me questions. It worked out beautifully,” he said.....

“If the tornado had hit a month earlier, before installing the electronic health record system in Joplin, St. John’s would not have been able to bring up our mobile hospital within a week’s time. We still would not be operational at this point,” said Mike McCreary of Mercy Technology Services. “Today, patients have continuity of care across all of our physician locations and the new St. John’s Mercy Hospital, and connection to the entire Mercy health system, because of our EHR [Electronic Health Records] and our ability to quickly re-establish communication services.”

McCreary noted that St. John’s patients also have access to historical medical records. More current health information was stored within the new EHR, and older paper records had been scanned prior to the tornado and are securely stored on servers located in other communities.

The EMR system? Epic's.