Improving care with an automated patient history.

an electronic health record (EHR) system is how to fill it with patient data. What data should be entered, who should enter it, and when should it be done? I’ve seen many strategies tried, and in my experience the ideal solution is to have patients enter as much data as possible themselves before beginning a patient visit. This saves physicians time and can even lead to higher-quality data. After all, the patient is the person most interested in providing a thorough history. This article is intended to help you decide whether you want to have your patients enter their own histories and, if the answer is yes, to settle on the best approach. It is based on both my experience and literally thousands of studies done during the past 40 years. Patient-entered histories have proven to be effective, and the time a patient-entered history can save leaves you time to do an unhurried assessment and plan. Better yet, some vendors have now moved to the Web, so patients can do their histories easily at home.