The past five to 10 years, hospitals and physician offices have been in a mad dash to implement electronic health records (EHRs) to meet governmental regulatory requirements. Now that most projects are either complete or well on their way, what are we doing with all of the data that EHRs promised to generate?

From my experience as a physician at a large academic medical center with one of the top EHRs in the industry, I have to say not much— the data isn’t readily available in any sort of usable format. If I want performance data, cost data, outcomes data, etc., I have to either track it myself or become good friends with someone in IT. Both of these options require something I don't have a lot of—time.

I thought the new EHR was going to make this easy for me, but it didn’t.

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