Patients weigh in on the good, bad and ugly of EMRs, tackling whether they are mostly instruments to maximize patient billings, whether they interfere with physician-patient interactions and how they improve care coordination.

A former member of a health cooperative shared his thoughts: “It used to be the case that a standard office visit was a flat charge—most recently $80. Now, when your physician asks a question, responds to one of yours, and makes a note in your record, this becomes another billing code. The result is that a 15-minute office visit can easily run to several hundred dollars, perhaps just because you mention a concern or the physician asks another question.”

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