The Association Between Health Information Technology & Patient Provider Contact: Implications for Practice

Health information technology (HIT) has been heralded as the savior of U.S. healthcare, offering a chance to limit soaring costs, improve patient outcomes, connect providers to foster patient-centered care, and actively engage patients in their own healthcare. Indeed, these systems—especially those devoted to electronic medical records—are arguably the only proposed bipartisan solution to our healthcare struggles, and as such, they have been enthusiastically embraced by facilities. This paper proposes that the introduction of HIT into patient rooms and the insertion of HIT platforms into the provider-patient relationship may negatively affect interactions between patients and medical staff.