Can electronic medical records (EMR) save us?
Technology has done marvelous things to better human life. It seems only normal, then, that we would turn to electronic medical records (technology) to help solve our health care spending problems.
Eventually, we might even get there. I sure hope so, but it will take a while – maybe a decade, or two.
Dr. Richard Reece has been reporting on the business of health care for more than 40 years. He informs me that today, about 10 percent of hospitals and a like number of doctors are using electronic medical records. That is a good start.
But there is a huge pushback by doctors, because it is expensive, time-consuming, and is viewed as adding very little to their ability to practice medicine. Before doctors commit thousands of dollars to convert their office and patient records to such a system, they will have to see its medical benefits, or a great deal of savings in streamlined record-keeping.
A second issue, seldom addressed, is that the emerging EMR systems speak but one language – the language of their own kind. That is, they do not speak to other EMR systems operated by other doctors and hospitals. Over time, this should be able to be resolved, but to find the common language and/or the translator that acts as a go-between will be costly, and in itself, create errors and misinformation.
Dr. Reece points out, too, that doctors in one specialty often need to know different information than doctors in another specialty. What is vitally important to the podiatrist, and about which he or she would take pains to record, is of very little interest to the pediatrician (who has his or her own specific needs for patient history).
I don’t write this as a doom-and-gloom commentary, but a realistic one. Reece said, “Someday, I suppose someone will come up with an algorithm to tie all this together,” but it may take 20 years to get there.
In the meantime, the most pressing need is to change patient behavior, in the way they take care of themselves, and how they spend their own health dollars. We cannot hope that technology will offset bad personal decisions.
