I was watching some highlights from last week's New Hampshire presidential debates yesterday and I continue to be amazed at how everyone seems to think that electronic health records are going to be the answer to all of our problems. One candidate, Tommy Thompson I believe, claimed that going paperless will decrease national health care costs by 10% alone as if it would happen overnight.
Now I think EHR's are a good thing and have enormous potential to improve the health care system, but I have difficulty seeing this as being a solution to all of our health care woes. Our office is in the very slow process of preparing to make this leap and we've already invested thousands of dollars of just hardware that we will eventually need for a system. When adding in software costs, it will likely take years to break even on the investment of going paperless.
The big question I have regarding EHR's and the health care system, however, is their lack of compatibility. There are now dozens of quality certified programs now available, but they essentially only interact with their own kind. If we are going to see information technology result in more efficient, effective, and lower cost health care overall, we need electronic health records to be easily transportable between sites of care. I need to be able to pull up an electronic chart in my office at my local hospital, nursing home, or on a laptop when I do a home visit. Once more an ER physician in Arizona should be able to access it when my patient get sick while on vacation.
I have yet to see any current system that is so portable. In order to achieve this seamlessness we will either need to have government intervention, have one program rise to the top to create an essential monopoly (e.g. Microsoft windows), or have the leaders in EHR's agree on a similar platform to allow communication between programs.
While all of these are possible, all of these candidates seem to be betting the farm on something that seems to be far from a sure bet. Perhaps this just goes to show how enamoured we all are with technology as an end unto itself.
Now I think EHR's are a good thing and have enormous potential to improve the health care system, but I have difficulty seeing this as being a solution to all of our health care woes. Our office is in the very slow process of preparing to make this leap and we've already invested thousands of dollars of just hardware that we will eventually need for a system. When adding in software costs, it will likely take years to break even on the investment of going paperless.
The big question I have regarding EHR's and the health care system, however, is their lack of compatibility. There are now dozens of quality certified programs now available, but they essentially only interact with their own kind. If we are going to see information technology result in more efficient, effective, and lower cost health care overall, we need electronic health records to be easily transportable between sites of care. I need to be able to pull up an electronic chart in my office at my local hospital, nursing home, or on a laptop when I do a home visit. Once more an ER physician in Arizona should be able to access it when my patient get sick while on vacation.
I have yet to see any current system that is so portable. In order to achieve this seamlessness we will either need to have government intervention, have one program rise to the top to create an essential monopoly (e.g. Microsoft windows), or have the leaders in EHR's agree on a similar platform to allow communication between programs.
While all of these are possible, all of these candidates seem to be betting the farm on something that seems to be far from a sure bet. Perhaps this just goes to show how enamoured we all are with technology as an end unto itself.
The Country Doctor