Don't computers add safety to medical care?

Health care planners believe that computers eliminate errors.  Most doctors know that this is not true.  This has been studied already at several large institutions that were early implementers of electronic records.  The finding that computers do not eliminate the total number of errors has not been widely publicized in health care management journals because Federal health care planners are committed to creating a nationwide computerized health record system as a matter of public policy and do not like to be confused or contradicted by inconvenient facts which don't fit their theories.  Computer data is only as accurate as the information entered.  There is a phrase "GIGO" which stands for "garbage in - garbage out".

Computers may eliminate the physician bad handwriting misinterpretation errors for prescriptions and orders, but computers don't eliminate medication and factual errors.  Errant mouse clicks occur.  Wrong boxes can be checked.  In the hospital setting where doctors and nurses have lists of patients they follow, it is very easy for physicians to enter orders on the wrong patient and for the nurses to enter their notes on the wrong patient on their lists.  Computers sometimes drop information, and electronic files can become corrupted.  Accidental deletions and hard drive crashes are not infrequent events.  Computers change the type of errors which occur but do not eliminate them completely.  Furthermore, computer errors are more spectacular because they are propagated faster and more extensively across entire digital networks.  Errors which can be transmitted to other doctors' offices, other health care institutions, government research centers, and offsite data storage facilities at light speed are more difficult to retract or correct because the corrections must be made over an entire digital network .   When misinformation is disseminated rapidly and widely, it poses a safety threat that a patient will get the wrong treatment