A report released Thursday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) shows an increasing proportion of the country’s doctors are ditching paper files in favour of computer-based records.
In a survey of almost 2,300 Canadian family physicians, 73 per cent said they have gone to an EMR (electronic medical record) system in their offices, triple the 23 per cent who had adopted online charts in 2006.
EMR use varies significantly by province: Alberta topped the list, with 85 per cent of the surveyed family doctors employing EMRs, while the lowest adoption rate was in Newfoundland and Labrador, where 36 per cent said they store patient data electronically. In Ontario, 78 per cent of the family physicians said they’ve gone that route, joined by about 60 per cent of their Quebec colleagues.
Source: CTV News