Kwon+and+Shneyderman+OpEd

My mother is constantly visiting doctors. Today it was for back pain. The doctor asked her about other medications, but mom couldn't remember. Sorting through paper to figure that out took the rest of the afternoon.

In the end, instead of a prescription for pain, she came home with hemorrhoid cream. (USE EXCLAMATION POINTS SPARINGLY. UNDERSTATEMENT IS MORE POWERFUL.) For a minute, imagine a world where all her medical records are accessible at the touch of a button. In which getting vital medical information takes minutes, not hours. In which trash cans aren't stuffed with reams of paper. In which she gets real help instead of hemorrhoid cream. Electronic medical records are making it happen.

The health care legislation passed by Congress is helping to pay for the switch to electronic records. Even so, switching isn't mandatory, so not all hospitals are taking advantage of the funding.

I think they should.

They throw away about 6,600 tons of waste per day -- and we're not talking only about band-aids and bedsheets. By some calculations, almost 20 percent of hospital waste is paper -- that’s 1,300 tons of paper per day! Since it takes 17 trees to produce only 1 ton of paper (SOURCE?), that’s more than 22,000 trees a day – a moderate-sized forest (HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?) Think about how many of those trees will be saved if //all// hospitals decide made the switch to electronic medical records. THERE ARE HOSPITALS OF ALL SIZES, TREES OF ALL SIZES, FORESTS OF ALL SIZES -- SOMETHING ABOUT THIS PARAGRAPH IS STIRRING DOUBT IN ME. I BELIEVE THE GENERAL POINT YOU'RE MAKING BUT WANT A BIT MORE DOCUMENTATION.

What's more, electronic records result in fewer medical errors. Studies have found that one patient in three suffers medical errors. How many errors could be eliminated if doctors didn’t have to guess about their patients' prescription usage? How much time could be saved for actual medical care? In my mom's case, electronic records would have cut her dealings with the doctor from half a day to half an hour.

She would have made it to bingo. (AGAIN, UNDERSTATE THE POINT. WRY HUMOR IS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN A JOKE THAT CALLS ATTENTION TO ITSELF.)

I LIKED THIS BECAUSE IT USED A STORY FRAME, AND NO ONE ELSE, SO FAR, HAS USED THAT APPROACH. IT HUMANIZED THE PIECE. WATCH OUT FOR THOSE STATISTICS, THOUGH -- THEY NEED TO BE SOURCE.