In the United States, medical information about patients traditionally has been recorded and stored on paper forms. However, there are efforts to persuade doctors to adopt electronic medical record systems in which information about patients is stored in electronic databases rather than on paper. It is argued that storing patients’ medical records in electronic databases has several advantages over traditional paper-based record keeping.
Reducing Costs
First, the use of electronic records can help reduce costs by saving money on storing and transferring medical records. While paper records require a significant amount of storage space, electronic medical records take up virtually no space. Moreover, by having patients’ records computerized in databases, doctors can easily access the records from almost anywhere and can easily duplicate and transfer them when necessary. This costs much less than copying, faxing, or transporting paper records from one location to another.
Preventing Errors
Second, electronic medical records are crucial to reducing the chances of medical errors. Illegible handwriting, improper transcription of data, and nonstandard organization of paper records have caused errors that in some cases have had serious consequences for the patients’ health. In contrast, electronic records are associated with standardization of forms and legible computer fonts and thus minimize the possibility of human error.
Aiding Research
Third, electronic medical records can greatly aid medical research by making it possible to gather large amounts of data from patient records. It is often impractical, impossible, or prohibitively expensive to manually go through thousands of patients’ paper records housed in doctors’ offices. However, with the existence of electronic medical records, it would be simple to draw out the needed information from the medical databases because the databases are already formatted for data collection. Once in the electronic system, the records could be accessed from any research location.
The reading passage and the listening section are both about how to keep medical records. The article suggests that it is better to use electronic medical record systems for some reasons, while the lecturer disputes the idea by pointing out some flaws of those reasons.
Firstly, the article mentions that the use of electronic records can help reduce costs by saving money on storing and transferring medical records. However, the lecturer does not agree with that. She says that almost every doctor now would still keep the paper records as backup even if they use electronic systems. Doctors keep those paper records because of some legal uses, such as the original signatures. Hence, using electronic records would not save any costs on storing.
Secondly, the article argues that electronic medical records are crucial to reducing the chances of medical errors. Nevertheless, the lecturer disagrees with that. She points out that nowadays doctors still use pen and paper to take notes and write prescriptions, and the ones who actually enter the data afterwards are office staff. Thus, the cause of the potential errors are in fact staff misunderstanding what doctors wrote. As a result, using electronic records can not prevent errors.
Finally, the article states that electronic medical records can greatly aid medical research by making it possible to gather large amounts of data from patient records. Nonetheless, the lecturer is against this opinion. She believes that researchers would find it difficult to obtain patients' data because of strict privacy laws in the United States. Patients can choose to keep their medical records private for any reason at any time. Even if patients agree to provide their data, still a lot of strict and complicated procedures are needed to follow.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, finally, first, firstly, hence, however, if, nevertheless, nonetheless, second, secondly, so, still, thus, while, in fact, such as, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 7.0 10.4613686534 67% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 5.04856512141 139% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 7.30242825607 82% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 12.0772626932 83% => OK
Pronoun: 21.0 22.412803532 94% => OK
Preposition: 32.0 30.3222958057 106% => OK
Nominalization: 1.0 5.01324503311 20% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1519.0 1373.03311258 111% => OK
No of words: 289.0 270.72406181 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.25605536332 5.08290768461 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.12310562562 4.04702891845 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.52704626229 2.5805825403 98% => OK
Unique words: 159.0 145.348785872 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.550173010381 0.540411800872 102% => OK
syllable_count: 471.6 419.366225166 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 3.25607064018 92% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.23620309051 109% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 1.25165562914 240% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 2.5761589404 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 13.0662251656 130% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 21.2450331126 80% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 42.2334097564 49.2860985944 86% => OK
Chars per sentence: 89.3529411765 110.228320801 81% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.0 21.698381199 78% => OK
Discourse Markers: 9.0 7.06452816374 127% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 4.33554083885 138% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 4.45695364238 112% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.27373068433 140% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.292158544737 0.272083759551 107% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0887968283442 0.0996497079465 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0631593160694 0.0662205650399 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.174500439628 0.162205337803 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0236439179286 0.0443174109184 53% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.8 13.3589403974 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 53.8541721854 101% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 11.0289183223 90% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.93 12.2367328918 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.58 8.42419426049 102% => OK
difficult_words: 75.0 63.6247240618 118% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 10.7273730684 75% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 10.498013245 84% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.2008830022 80% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 78.3333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 23.5 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.