'Good' organizational reasons for 'bad' clinical records

As the inverted commas imply, good and bad are the words analysed in this foundational text for health informatics by Howard Garfinkel. Unfortunately it isn't available online. At the risk of censure from fair dealing zealots here is a central part of the paper:
When any case folder [medical record] was read as an actuarial record its contents fell so far short of accuracy as to leave us puzzled as to why "poor records" as poor as these should nevertheless be so assiduously kept. On the other hand, when folder documents were regarded as unformulated terms of a potential therapeutic contract, ie as documents assembled in the folder in open anticipation of some occasion when the terms of a therapeutic contract might have to be formulated from them, the assiduousness with which folders were kept, even though their contents were extremely uneven in quantity and quality, began to "make sense".

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