ABSTRACT
A paperless practice is one that records all medical records and prescribing on an electronic patient record (EPR). It does not use paper charts for anything other than storing historical medical records and copies of paper letters and reports from other organizations. The usual reason for wanting to go paperless is that the health care professionals have spent thousands of dollars on an EPR system and they want to get all the benefits he/she are promised from it. Dr Jones suggested that they visit a local paperless practice that was using the same EPR system. From a medico-legal position a paperless practice is actually better than a paper-based one. All systems should have an inbuilt audit trail. The major barrier to becoming paperless used to be the requirement for physician signatures to sign off charts and prescriptions.
