Electronic health records (EHRs) can improve your health care quality, your ability to provide preventive cancer care to your patients, and patient outcomes. EHRs can:

• Notify you and your care team when you are due for cancer screenings: With an EHR, you can quickly generate lists of patients who have not received cancer screenings and use the data to proactively reach out to and screen patients. 

• Remind you when a patient needs preventive care: Using clinical decision support rules, EHRs can automatically notify you when patients are eligible for preventive cancer care.

• Help you analyze and display patient data and track trends over time: EHRs make it easier to collect and analyze data about your patients in a meaningful way, which can enable you to track patients over time and identify trends associated with cancer. 

• Open notes allows you as a patient to read the physicians notes on the appointment. So, not only will you be able to view your lab results, PET scans, CT scans, but you can view your oncologists notes on your progress. Some patients may choose to share their notes with caregivers or family members or keep them private. Cancer can be a very stressful time in your life and you might walk away from an appointment confused or frazzled, open notes allows you to look back on the conversation with your doctor and easily read what your next course of action may be. The Cancer Care Innovation at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, switched to an open-notes environment in 2009 and has had lots of success.