I have been working in health care for 30 years. Simplified access to patient records will surely improve efficiencies in certain situation for a given patient. However there is a void in the continuity of this information based on the fact the the trail of information stops when a patient is discharged. Even if this patient has nurse visitations there are many gaps in the data.
Why are these gaps critical? Rarely does a patient suffer an event while hospitalized. It occurs at home when there is no form of record keeping leaving this enormous gap in critical information.
If it is believed that this effort to streamline health care though the development of an automated record keeping system it would follow that the continuity of the data is critical. The current gaps in how and when the data is collected needs to be changed to gather meaningful cause and effect information.This information can also be beneficial for faster diagnosis in the future for other patients.
This being said. It seems that heavily relying on this initiative is a very small part of what is needed for reform. Ask yourself if automated health care records existed today how would this provide access to health care for people who currently have none? How will this change the mind set of the self insured who do not see their doctors because each time they do their monthly premium is increased? How do you practice preventative medicine in an environment where this "RECORD" now implies you are predisposed and therefore considered a risk? In this scenario these great records would not work in the favor of the patient but certainly help risk managers within the insurance companies.
Health care has been ignored. It is in many ways the same as Wall Street....making bets based on probabilities by insures relative to outcomes, versus making bets on stocks,commodities etc. Insures deny applications,deny claims and increase premiums to earn money on there bets an toss all the non income generating assets on to the taxpayer and keep the low risk money makers one their balance sheets.
The big difference is on Wall Street the carnage is a loss of capital and the bad bets the insures result in the loss of human lives. Now the government sits back and talks about record keeping when it's a small part of the problem and a long term return on investment and this investment is not without risk.
The dollar needs to be followed very closely to find the waste and develop a meaningful plan to solve this problem. We failed to do it with the collapse of the Financial Markets.Why not do it with Health Care rather than throwing a records program at the wall to see if it sticks?
Zig Ziglar: "Success is where preparation meets opportunity"
Let's prepare for success on this very critical opportunity.
Red
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I never thought about the fact that most of the information that should be included in a person's health record are the things that occur outside of the healthcare setting. This presents a problem for the continuity of health information as you suggested regarding the troubling gaps in the information. I feel like sometimes patients do not tell the whole story about what happened to them and sometimes the elderly may not remember all the details that would be very helpful in planning treatment for the patient. So I do agree with you that electronic medical records are not the sole answer to reforming our healthcare system.
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