Is Adoption of the Electronic Medical Record Worth the Wait (and Expense)?

[This article posted on March 26, 2009. It is posted within the following categories: Healthcare Policy & The Media, Science & Research, via Michael Douglas, MD, MBA.]

At this point, any objections to the electronic health record/IT are moot. It’s practically 2010, after all. Used to be that the most vocal complainers over the adoption of EHR into the average daily medical workflow were of the geezer set — those who graduated medical school before 1970. Well, call it the snail’s pace of technology (the efficient wonders EHR is supposed to create and the herculean task of waiting for it to happen); but, physician resistance isn’t the only source of healthy skepticism toward the centerpiece of Obama’s planned healthcare overhaul. | LINK

1 Response » to “Is Adoption of the Electronic Medical Record Worth the Wait (and Expense)?”

Nuesosft says:

April 2, 2009 at 4:38 PM

I think there are three separate concerns that tend to be lumped together when people start debating the privacy of electronic health records, and we need to address all three to convince the doubtful that EHRs can keep patient data secure. The first concern is that of hackers independent of a practice or medical institution somehow accessing patient data care for malicious purposes. The chances of a hacker accessing Internet-based EHRs and client server-based EHRs that don’t transmit their patient data across the public forum of the Web are miniscule (note that the security differences between Internet-based and Web-based applications are not known by many people, who tend to lump the two technologies together; see http://www.nuesoft.com/evolve to understand the difference). If Obama’s administration sets some minimum security standards relating to interoperability and the way that EHRs transmit data, patient information will quite literally be as secure as data held by the Federal Reserve or Defense Department.

The second privacy concern is that people within the practice or medical institution, whether a care provider or support staff, may access patient records needlessly out of curiosity (most likely with celebrities). However, electronic health records make this type of security breach less likely, not more likely; different permissions levels for different users and the “audit trail” in place on robust EHRs make records more secure than paper records.

Finally, there’s a worry that, as Rob outlines above, health information will be shared with companies against our wishes. Although EHRs make data easier to transmit, this is not really a concern about implementing EHRs; it’s a concern about federal regulations – and the ethical standards of the health care industry. Choosing to not store patient data electronically won’t prevent changes in privacy regulations, although it might stunt progress in health care.

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