PHR, EHR and EMR, Remote EHR Access, and ECC EMR Report

Time again for another EMR round up. This one includes a few pet peeves and also some interesting information that I think some will find useful.

Also, the tweets sometimes display funky if you haven’t noticed. The good thing is that I’m about half way through a redesign of the website. Once that’s done, I shouldn’t have that problem any more. I’m excited to show you the new design. Let’s hope it all works out well and I can finish it quickly.


I love the sarcasm of the response. I particularly like it when talking about EMR and EHR. I use them synonymously in all my writing. Those that make a big deal about the difference make me laugh since I think it doesn’t matter. For all practical purposes if I say one or the other everyone knows what I’m talking about. If you haven’t noticed in the same post I’ll interchange EMR and EHR. I’m sure it annoys some people, but I think it illustrates the point that it doesn’t matter. We all know we’re talking about the same thing.


This tweet makes me sad. I don’t know how Wendy Sue Swanson, MD doesn’t know about all the ways to run Windows programs on her Mac: parallels, bootcamp, virtual machine, etc etc etc. It makes me more sad that her IT department didn’t inform her of these options as well. The patient suffers just because the doctor has bad information.


I have no idea what the ECC comm report is, but it sounds official. I assume it’s a UK report on EMR since Bryony is in the UK. If someone else knows more about it I’d love to learn. Is it worth searching out when it comes out?

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

9 Comments

  • I’m with Wendy! Any EMR that requires a Windows (or any other specific) O/S to run should be avoided. After all, these tools are supposed to help us, not hinder us.

  • The ECC Com report on EMR, ain’t our EMRs.

    It’s the The British Parlement’s Energy and Climate Change Committee’s report on their Treasury’s move to make changes in a draft Energy Bill for their upcoming Electricity Market Reform (EMR), due to be introduced this autumn.

    It could have been worse. At least they avoided any Market Underservices or Hierarchical Internal Elections.

  • Thanks Carl. #lazyweb

    I could have sworn that I’d heard of the ECC com EMR report before. I guess not. Good to know I shouldn’t watch for it.

  • I’m surprised my tweet made you sad. I’m more the norm w my challenges than the outlier. The reality is that all other inboxes (gmail, hosp email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Doximity, wordpress, etc) are all on my phone and get my attention whenever I log in. Yes, I do know how to get to EPIC from home (on my old clunky PC). And I can access my working desktop (if someone else isn’t in clinic seeing patients) via a virtual “remote desktop” space. But is it accessible/easy/always at hand like all other parts of my job when traveling away from clinic? NO.
    My clinic has supported me. But patient care is about 10 logins and a remote desktop away and that’s no good for anyone–my patients or me.

  • Wendy,
    Thanks for stopping by and giving more details. The problems you describe have very little to do with the Apple vs. PC issue you describe in your tweet. Sure, there are some possible issues there, but they are easily solved. The problems you describe have everything to do with Epic and how difficult it is to connect to remotely. This IS a major problem and is definitely the norm with no fix in the foreseeable future.

    Although, this has nothing to do with the O/S you’re running at home. In fact, these days the O/S you run at home has very little impact for most people. It’s almost always about the software you’re connecting to.

    I agree. Epic and most other hospital IT vendors don’t make access easy for doctors and that’s terrible for patients and you.

  • I think there is a big difference between Electronic Health Records and Electronic Medical Records. EHRis more comprehensive than just medical info. Developmental history, social history, educational and vocational info, all the psycho- and socio- in biopsychosocial.
    Disclosure: I am a psychologist.

  • EdZ. I think you are right and wrong. Your definition of an EHR is on the spot. It’s what EHRs are supposed to encompass.

    However, in practice, it’s a rare person who makes the distinction. It gets worse. From what I can tell, people use the term that their peers use. When they write about these systems they use the term they hear and see without regard to the actual subject.

    Moreover, product vendors often throw into their EMRs, EHR types of data creating a sort of, but not strictly an EHR.

    The result of off hand use of the terms and vendor add ons is a great deal of confusion. My favorite approach is the one suggested a while ago on one of Joh’s blogs: E*R.

  • I like to use EMR and EHR interchangably even in the same post. Although, I loved what one doctor told me about the choice. He said, I and my doctor colleagues use EMR, so let’s use EMR.

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories