In January of 2014, President Bush stood to give his State of the Union address. While addressing many topics. However, with just two sentences uttered in the middle of an hour plus speech, President Bush set forth a ten year motion that would change the face of health care as we once knew it. Towards the middle of the Presidents Union Address, he states “By computerizing health records, we can avoid dangerous medical mistakes, reduce costs and improve care. To protect the doctor-patient relationship and keep good doctors doing good work, we must eliminate wasteful and frivolous medical lawsuits” (Bush, 2004). “President Bush outlined a plan to ensure that most Americans would have electronic health records within the next ten years. Bush believed that innovations in electronic health records and the secure exchange of medical information would help transform health care in America – improving health care quality, preventing medical errors, reducing health care costs, improving administrative efficiencies, reducing paperwork, and increasing access to affordable health care” (The White House, n.d.).
The ten years following the 2004 State of the Union Address allowed development of electronic health records (also known as EHRs) to be adopted into health care facilities across the nation. An EHR is defined the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services as “an electronic version of a patients’ medical history, that is maintained by the provider over time, and may include all of the key administrative clinical data relevant to that persons care under a particular provider, including demographics, progress notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data and radiology reports” (CMS, 2012).
Medical facilities had to learn to adopt to having electronic patient records which has helped cut down the percentages of medical error.