Abstract
Many of us can think back to a key role a teacher played in shaping our world-view or our career. In my case, one such person was Dr. Hiram Curry, a general practitioner who retrained in neurology and then founded the first academic Family Medicine Department. Its clinic has many of the characteristics we now associate with a patient centered medical home. He introduced me to Dr. Larry Weed’s seminal book Medical Records, Medical Education and Patient Care and through it I became an advocate of his idea of a Problem Oriented Medical Record. I joined Dr. Curry’s effort and led the development of one of the first ambulatory EHR systems. Dr. Curry taught me many things but one in particular is relevant to this topic. He used to caution his residents that they would see patients for a few minutes every so often and think that what they did in those few brief encounters would make all the difference. He was fond of saying that what the patients did between those encounters would actually make that difference.