This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, October 25th, 2019. I'm Caleb Brown.

Electronic medical records were supposed to revolutionize the delivery of medicine, but it hasn't worked

out that way.

Twylabraze is author of the new book Big Brother in the exam room, The Dangerous Truth

about Electronic health records.

We spoke last month.

I want to start with this because I think most people just have an inkling about

what's in their electronic health records. How has that document changed over the last 20 years or so?

Well, there were paper medical records and a lot of people had paper, a lot of

doctors and hospitals had paper medical records but after the the essential

quasi mandate to put them in or be penalized. Now most of them have an electronic

health record and it's not paper anymore and it contains all sorts of things that were never in the paper

record and actually they're very difficult to find because everything is in this electronic computerized

form through fields and drop-down menus and different

screens and so it's a very different entity that has been imposed on the

doctrine patient in the exam room than it was before.

And I should say, I should say that there were electronic health records.

There were electronic health records before the, before Congress imposed this particular

government certified version of the electronic health record which I call the

government EHR and those those private electronic health records,

they worked for the doctor.

Some of the doctors actually pulled them together themselves.

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