Obama's EHR Plan
In a recent article from Medical Economics, two healthcare information technology experts have written a letter to President Obama, warning him against investing too many federal dollars in existing electronic health records systems.
Their statement which I totally agree with are that existing EHR systems are too expensive, difficult to implement, disruptive to practice workflows, not proven to improve patient care, and don’t do a good job of sharing information with each other.
If all physicians decided to implement one of the dozens of systems they chose themselves, it would be similar to the Biblical times during the tower of Babel and disruption of languages. Little communication would occur among the various systems.
Obama made the statement “We will make sure that every doctor’s office and hospital in this country is using cutting-edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year,” during a December radio address.
There is a bill under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives presently that calls for incentive payments up to $41,000 over five years beginning in 2011 for physicians who adopt EHR systems.
Before millions of dollars are spent on this endeavor by the government, the industry needs to set communication standards that all software vendors conform to in order to allow transfer of information. As of now, this does not occur. So a lab value in one system may not appear in the same computer field in another system. Names, addresses, and all other pertinent information have to be standardized with the same nomenclature before full implementation can be completed.
Better use of the money would be to standardize payment systems with a single form for all insurers are required to use and to increase the adoption of electronic patient referrals, and online “patient portals” that allow for electronic communication between doctors and patients.
Throwing money at a problem without investing in the infrastructure and the standardization will only exacerbate the problem and create more hassles and cost!
Their statement which I totally agree with are that existing EHR systems are too expensive, difficult to implement, disruptive to practice workflows, not proven to improve patient care, and don’t do a good job of sharing information with each other.
If all physicians decided to implement one of the dozens of systems they chose themselves, it would be similar to the Biblical times during the tower of Babel and disruption of languages. Little communication would occur among the various systems.
Obama made the statement “We will make sure that every doctor’s office and hospital in this country is using cutting-edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year,” during a December radio address.
There is a bill under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives presently that calls for incentive payments up to $41,000 over five years beginning in 2011 for physicians who adopt EHR systems.
Before millions of dollars are spent on this endeavor by the government, the industry needs to set communication standards that all software vendors conform to in order to allow transfer of information. As of now, this does not occur. So a lab value in one system may not appear in the same computer field in another system. Names, addresses, and all other pertinent information have to be standardized with the same nomenclature before full implementation can be completed.
Better use of the money would be to standardize payment systems with a single form for all insurers are required to use and to increase the adoption of electronic patient referrals, and online “patient portals” that allow for electronic communication between doctors and patients.
Throwing money at a problem without investing in the infrastructure and the standardization will only exacerbate the problem and create more hassles and cost!
posted by Anonymous at 5:35 AM
2 Comments:
EMRs technology has been minimal in the United States, in spite of studies showing revenue gains after implementation.
EMR systems are being adopted in many hospitals and private clinics. This would take time to get the whole data from paper to get digital but in near future all the US residents will have a online medical records as Obama adminitration has set a deadline by 2014 to digitize all the data of hospitals.
Post a Comment
<< Home