Electronic health records (EHRs) hold much promise for reducing medical errors and improving quality of care, but the prospect that patient advocates can use EHRs to do an autopsy of where a patient's care went wrong has some in the medical industry sounding an alarm.

Last week a story (actually a press release, on closer scrutiny) in the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch talked about "Crippling Access to Physician's Actions" allowed by tattle-tale Electronic Health Records. Among the horrors described by IT consultant Dr. Sam Bierbock:

EHRs ... can also be audited to examine how long it took them to act after an abnormal lab result came in, if the doctor checked on on-line references before making a clinical decision, what was said in every email and how long the doctor took to respond, and even how long the doctor looked at a screen or scrolled down to read an entire document.

And this is a bad thing?

Please see full article below for more information.