Should we refer to a patient’s digital medical records as their Electronic Medical Record (EHR) or their Electronic Medical Record (EMR)?
Well, according to HealthIT.gov , part of “The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)” which is “at the forefront of the administration’s health IT efforts and is a resource to the entire health system to support the adoption of health information technology and the promotion of nationwide health information exchange to improve health care. “ the better term is EHR because they feel the term EMR is restricted to the digital records in a single clinician’s office, whereas the term EHR better represents all the persons health records, including laboratories and specialists.
This does appear to be consistent with public use of the term, where EHR and Electronic Health Record consistently beat EMR and Electronic Medical Record respectively. (Interestingly, for the medical search engine PubMed, the reverse appears to be true). See below:
So, what to do?
Well, for common usage, most healthcare organizations should work with the term EHR. It appears to be the U.S. Government’s IT standard, and the term EHR is commonly used by both Medicare and Medicaid.
However, from a philosophical point of view, it is interesting to reflect on the use of the term ‘health” rather than “medical” by the Healthcare IT Industry. For me, who has worked with EHRs tens of thousands of times, they aren’t used so much for managing a patient’s health as they are for managing a patient’s diseases, and the term EMR probably is more accurate.
Anyway, I suspect the term Electronic “Health” Records, rather than the term Electronic “Medical” Records suggests there’s a little wishful thinking is going on in world Healthcare IT Land.