"The greatest impediment to the adoption of electronic health records is privacy"

Mostly the cost. First the hardware and software purchase, then the maintenance fees and finally the losses in efficiency while the system is introduced, which can typically take a year or more while staff are trained in the system use and old paper files are digitized so that they can be retained in the database for future reference. Unless a practice has multiple locations and a need for access to data stored centrally, the benefits are more to the insurers and Medicare who are afforded more direct communications to their information systems. As for patient records being “portable”, that presumes that there are uniform or at least compatible standards between all the many systems in the market, and what presently exists at hospitals, insurance companies, pharmacies and doctors offices. Is there?
Doubtful.

Privacy is a red herring. The real issue is that these systems are very expensive and the entities that stand to benefit most by their implementation do not want to pay for it. What they are trying to do is impose the implementation and the costs on the doctors without offering to increase reimbursement to cover the costs. As things stand, why blame private practices for resisting?

typical. a lwayers blog. Cost is what stops me, not privacy. Just like this HIpAA nonsense. It’s jsut what the lawyers feed off of.