There are quite a few naysayers that say "Yes. But..." for Electronic Health Records citing all kinds of issues such as, they are nor perfect yet, to really lame ones from some Doctors that say that it takes "us away from providing excellent healthcare"!
Say what? Who gets this "excellent healthcare". From my vantage point with every healthcare plan I have been on in the U.S, the plans have been costing an arm and a leg more every year, year over year, talking to your doctor getting harder and harder, and the amount of time they spend with you, lesser and lesser!
May be Warren Buffett and Bill Gates get this kind of care but not us and not anyone I know!
Let's get real! In my worst case scenario that may be imaginary, Doctors would rather have medical records on paper, easy to change, hide, if necessary, given all the Medical Malpractice implications that easily available, replicated, Electronic Medical records pose and the number of malpractice cases and the amounts that juries decide for the aggrieved!
Even if this were not true, Electronic Medical Records will make the information shareable, consolidatable, summarizable, and subject to many many medical studies that need not be done with dedicated, expensive, efforts but derived from EMR on a large scale.
Insurance companies and Providers are playing a big game of "Guess My Costs", escalating charges in the full expectation that the Insurance company pays 40% of what you ask for!
Having medical records centrally makes all this data consolidatable and now, true medical costs can be arrived at. It is a win win for end-consumers, providers and Insurers since it will, for the first time provide data that can be meaningfully consolidated, summarized and made use of.
This is not to talk about the Business Process Improvements and cutting down of waste that is possible. Just as the Internal Revenue Service is reaping the benefits of electronic filing, a large portion of medical costs (estimated to be as high as 30%) that is spent in manual, dumb, non-uniform handling of medical claims by many many providers submitted to a variety of Insurance Providers can be eliminated!
Of course, EMR is not THE answer to all of Healthcare woes. It is the single most, somewhat imperfect first step towards streamlining and improving healthcare.
So far when medical records and medical processes are digitized partially here and there, you don't get easy portability of information and more importantly, Business Intelligence about the business processes involved. When you don't get a sense of the Turn-Around Time taken for different business processes, you cannot calculate costs to any degree of precision.
So it's not only medical errors but basic information about business processes, costs and easy interoperability of computer systems so that manual work, like filing and handling claims are avoided, cutting costs by orders of magnitude.
The Key issue here is Digitization. Digitization aids measurement, more accurate assessments of costs, provides more transparency and helps in narrowing down where things needs to be improved, rather than thrashing about with guesswork.
Model T wasn't perfect compared to a Lexus today. But you need to start somewhere.
Singing praises of the Horse Drawn Carriage and the horse whip was a non-starter then and just as dumb, unfortunately!
Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road - Stewart Brand
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