Real and imagined barriers to an electronic medical record.

We developed an electronic medical record for ambulatory patients as part of the integrated clinical information system at Beth Israel Hospital. During the four years since it was installed, clinicians have entered 76,060 patient problems, 137,713 medications, and 33,938 notes. Residents, who had to type notes in themselves, entered 49.5% of their notes into OMR. Several factors that we had predicted would be barriers to an electronic medical record, such as clinician reluctance to type or perform data entry, have not proved to be significant problems. Other anticipated barriers, such as difficulties with dual charting on paper during transition to an electronic medical record, have been realized. The major unexpected barrier that has been encountered is increased clinician concern about the privacy and security of full text notes relative to other data elements in the clinical information system. We have attempted to modify the electronic medical record so as to overcome some of these barriers.