April 2013 ■ Journal of Dental Education 391 Editor’s Note Costs and Benefits of an Electronic Health Record

Dental schools worldwide typically own a clini-cal space where students treat patients. In order to improve patient outcomes, promote efficien-cies, and decrease liability, many dental school clinics have introduced an electronic health record (EHR). The EHR can also create databases to be used for research. Since several years have passed since EHRs were in-troduced, we can finally begin to look at their impact. It makes sense that collecting patient data in a standardized way in searchable databases will lead to better health outcomes. However, a recent review of items needed in the Quality Assessments Tool system found only about a third of the indicators were avail-able that could be accessed from EHR data for medical purposes.1 In addition, a recent article in the New York Times challenges our assumptions about cost savings.2 This article pointed out that, in 2005, the RAND Cor