Helping the Little Man: Electronic Health Records in Small PracticesSince small practices provide care to the majority of the population in the United States, according to Begum and al. (2013), it is important to set goals to improve one's strengths in health care delivery. This article will look at the status of electronic health records (EHRs) in small, non-hospital settings, as well as policies that can help alleviate current burdens. First and foremost, the definition and purpose of EHRs must be defined. It is a system of electronic patient medical records that can be easily updated and instantly accessed by authorized personnel. This system is a valuable asset because it improves the consolidation, clarity, organization, memorization and above all communication of patient information. Second, as noted by Goetz Goldberg, Kuzel, Feng, DeShazo, and Love (2012), a small medical practice is defined as an institution that has no more than 10 physicians on staff. In the study “Electronic Health Records in Small Medical Practices: Availability, Usage, and Perceived Benefits,” Rao et al. (2011) make observations on the variation in adoption, barriers, and perceived benefits of EHRs across different sizes of medical practices. It concludes that in smaller practices EHR adoption rates are lower and that if implemented it would be less likely to be used to its full potential. Furthermore, they observe that these institutions continue to face challenges in financial and technical support, and the most common theory put forward by most policy makers in terms of the main burdens they face includes: lack of access to funds; implementation complications; lack of understanding of the benefits; and less ability to write...... middle of paper ...... health care practices are less likely to adopt EHRs, and that most of those practices with EHR systems do not meet the basic standards for meaningful use. It is important to address this particular issue because, nationally, small practices are where the majority of individuals obtain care and where most physicians work. Given this statistical fact, it is imperative to concentrate not only monetary and technical resources on the largest health care institutions, but also to distribute aid to the “little man”. With the larger and more popular healthcare image of large general hospitals and its multitudes of large supporting businesses, and despite policies and regulations in place to support practices with no more than 10 providers, small medical practices do not should not be left behind in terms of improvement. its strengths, such as the implementation, maintenance and improvement of EHRs.