There’s the easy and the hard way.
EMR guru David Kibbe is encouraged that Obama is promising to spend the necessary resources to fund electronic records.
However, using it to simply allow doctors to select from the current potpourri of eclectic, disjointed programs may be easy, but not wise, as “it would only dramatically intensify the Babel that already exists.”
If it were up to me (and alas, it often isn’t), I would encourage the government to give every physician practice a copy of open-source VistA, and use the funds for implementation and support. This will guarantee doctors and hospitals nationwide will be able to share information on the same electronic record system.
Related posts:
- Medical students who are used to electronic records
- Most hospitals still use paper records, and why money alone won’t solve the electronic medical record problem
- Electronic records and economic sense
- Op-ed: Why doctors still balk at electronic medical records
- Paying doctors by the hour will increase the adoption of electronic medical records
- Funding electronic medical records and bailing out the Big Three automakers
- Poll: Will electronic medical records really save money?
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Open source: Some assembly required (a lot, actually), and every site will wind up having a unique implementation. If it were that easy, and without these kind of Tower Of Babel risks, then it would have been done long ago, and not only in healthcare.
Chuck Brooks
FutureWare SCG
Perhaps we should give everyone a 486 computer and a 56K modem? Sorry, but trying to fix the problem with a poor product is only going to jade people against EMR. Free junk is still junk.
What I want to know is this. Obama is planning on giving every doc an EMR, when is he going to cut my practice a check for 70 grand because we did it 3 years ago. It goes along with the entire bailout mentality. You can do everything right implement an EMR, pay your mortgage, live within your means and the federal government gives you a big middle finger while they proceed to “save” the world.
We should be able to transfer records electronically between hospitals and offices. If we can’t do that because the vendors are insisting on using their own proprietary data systems, then there’s no point. If the industry isn’t going to voluntarily get together on its own and set some standards for interoperability, the government needs to do it. I’m all for diversity in the marketplace and innovation and whatnot, but basic, critical functions like this need to come first.
Agree with Xerxes 1729, we need efficiency in information flow first.
There is mandated intraoperability: CCHIT (cchit.org). They will EVENTUALLY communicate. I agree that this is the gaping hole. One of the reasons for this, however, is not the IT industry. It is the fear of privacy advocates.
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