A recent story in the New York Times looks at two articles that will be published in the near future; these two articles point to the obstacles that our Health Care System will face in trying to implement digital medical records. These articles show that only about 9% of hospitals in the US have electronic medical records, and even those hospitals that do use electronic records, do not necessarily share the medical information with primary physicians or other hospitals.
It is important to note that the power of electronic records lies in the portability of these records. In other words, that a patient that has been discharged from a hip replacement surgery can have his or her records "beamed" to their long-term care facility, that way that person's primary care team can be in synch with the continuum of care of the patient. More communication between providers, less mistakes.
Communication is not happening, hospitals with electronic records are not able to communicate with other providers for different reasons, for example, the other providers cannot access e-records, there is no uniform "language" for electronic records, or simply physicians with older practices do not want to change.
It is of importance to note that the Obama administration will be awarding around $40,000 per doctor and millions to hospitals who adopt electronic records (with one condition, they have to be certified as adopting the technology for "meaningful use"). Still, we will see a rapid growth in this industry. As the future of this industry, we need to assure that this change is not merely a trend, but a positive step towards safer, more cost effective health care.
How will we take this step is the first question we need to ask ourselves. Then a flurry of questions begin to follow, for example,
What is meaningful use?
Who will have access to the records?
Should we commission one company to develop a standardized system, or should we use an open source approach?
The time will come when we will need to come together and have concrete answers to these questions, meanwhile, we can appreciate how throwing money at a problem is not the most efficient way to fix it.
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The New York Times, March 25th, 2009
By: Steve Lohr
