New York Times: "A Digital Shift on Health Data Swells Profits in an Industry"

This article highlights only one aspect of the "Failed Promise of Electronic Health Records". Through lobbying but also supported by a study from the RAND organization, the three final 2008 presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama outbid each other with promises to spend billions to entice doctors to use electronic record systems. Unfortunately, because of unsolved documentation problems, such systems are often disliked and slow the process. Instead of creating interoperability, electronic medical record systems (EMRs) with limited functionality and benefits were created. In particular, true interoperability has been neglected and attempts to create it through networks in the form of CHINs, RHIOs, and HIEs have failed. ... Mr. Tullman's comment is priceless. “I think it’s very common with every administration that when they want to talk about the automotive industry, they convene automotive executives, and when they want to talk about the Internet, they convene Internet executives." Of course, when "they" want to radically alter the way doctors do their jobs, "they" talk to academics, lawyers, publicly traded insurance CEOs and internet executives. Today's diatribe about quality care being more important than quantity care is laugh out loud funny. Unless you're a physician. Only in America does getting paid less and less, with more clerical data entry record-keeping at every step just to get paid and protect against lawsuit, translate into a...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: New York Times Julie Creswell healthcare IT lobby healthcare IT risk healthcare IT difficulties Robert O'Harrow Jr. Fred Schulte Source Type: blogs