Where electronic health records went wrong

• One system deleted everything doctors typed in between brackets, which they didn’t know would happen.
• Others complained about the number of options in the drop-down menu they use to prescribe Tylenol; apparently, 1 in 1,000 accidentally prescribe a suppository instead of a pill.
• Prescribing ibuprofen to a female patient always brings up a warning about the dangers of prescribing it to pregnant women, even if the patient is a child or a senior.
• As KHN puts it: "The average ER doc will make 4,000 mouse clicks over the course of a shift, and that the odds of doing anything 4,000 times without an error is small."

Between the lines: Even some strong EHR proponents say the 2009 stimulus flooded the sector with too much money and too many demands too quickly.

• "This is something the government mandated," one ER doctor told KHN. "There really wasn't the time to let the cream rise to the top; everyone had to jump in and pick something that worked and spend tens of millions of dollars on a system that is slowly killing us."

Go deeper: The pitfalls of electronic health records