ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS GO NATiONWIDE.

ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS GO NATIONWIDE

Nationwide electronic medical-information system is coming soon.   To lower the costs and raise the quality of health care, there is a rush to processing patient records digitally by 2014.   Changing the coding system that doctors and hospital use to bill insurers is also to undergo complete overhaul within the next three years. 

Only 4% of U.S. doctors are using fully functional electronic health record systems today.  Medicare this month is  bribing doctors to move swiftly with electronic prescriptions by offering them a 2% bonus if they use the system. 

It’s not enough to just install new IT systems in doctor’s offices.  The systems must talk to each other, so hospitals and doctors, and probably insurance companies, will have all relevant information to share with each other.

Congress has just appropriated twenty billion dollars for health care information technology.  Bringing in so much money so fast may result in waste, as we have seen in the TARP money the banks recently got.

The money will go to fund regional electronic systems, train technicians and give incentives to doctors to cooperate.  It will be a massive task to install rapidly large numbers of electronic record systems.   

Will this rapid training lead to unqualified technicians putting erroneous information about you? If wrong, will it be easier. for you to reconcile what is right than it is  trying to change your credit report. We are spending money on technology that is still not developed and it may result in a piecemeal system.  

Our fragmented health care system results in unnecessary tests and decisions are made without knowing all the patient’s relevant medical information. 

New standards make it easier for systems that are sold by different vendors to communicate with each other.  Older systems will need to be replaced.  Many states still don’t even have regional systems in place to handle patient information.  How will Congress safeguard your privacy?  When patients are treated in various states, how will the privacy issues of each state get reconciled?

A new coding system will result in more billing errors.  You the patient will be overcharged, the insurance company will be able to deny your doctor’s claim stating it didn’t have the proper code.  There will be more billing fraud and you and the doctors will not be paid quickly.  You will need to give the doctor more medical details, and each insurance company will want all the different details of your life.

We all agree on having some information sharing, but many bad experiences may be created that will create a mess and anger you the voter.  Will your privacy be compromised and will you get the prescriptions you need when your past medical history is on the table.  Will it force the doctors to be more defensive against legal suits?  What do you think?  Ask your doctor what he thinks about all this?

Sources: wsj nov. 11, 2008, NEJM 2008

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