Why Digital Medical Records Are No Panacea

theodp writes "As GE, Google, Intel, IBM, Microsoft and others pile into the business of computerized medical files in a stimulus-fueled frenzy, BusinessWeek reminds us that electronic health records have a dubious history. Under the federal stimulus program, hospitals can get several million dollars apiece for tech purchases over the next five years, and individual doctors can receive up to $44,000. There's also a stick: The feds will cut Medicare reimbursement for hospitals and practices that don't go electronic by 2015. But does the high cost and questionable quality of products currently on the market explain why barely 1 in 50 hospitals have a comprehensive electronic records system, and why only 17% of physicians use any type of electronic records? Joe Bugajski's chilling The Data Model That Nearly Killed Me suggests that may be the case."

Comments

Re:"The Stick" is typical in business

[timeOday]

Everybody is going to be "penalized," because medical costs in the US are insane and rapidly getting worse. Yes, doctors are overpaid, because the doctors' union (AMA) runs the industry for its own benefit so there are constant labor (doctor) shortages. Then there's the incredibly inefficient bureaucracy of insurance providers. The medical industry has been gobbling up a skyrocketing share of GDP for the last few decades, and it's simply mathematically impossible for that to continue forever.

Re:You know what would REALLY help lower the costs

[Rich0]

I've had loved ones in the hospital with fairly serious conditions. They do NOT get much attention from doctors. Maybe their charts get a little more attention, but the patients are lucky to see them for more than 5 minutes a day except when they're in surgery.

I think that the solution is they need more tiers of medical care. Right now you have mostly just doctors and nurses (I do realize there is some graduation in-between right now, but in a typical hospital those two categories will cover 90% of everybody who cares for a patient).

Hospitals could use everything from volunteers, to aides, to basic-intermediate-advanced nurses, to basic-intermediate-advanced doctors. Go ahead and put limits on what that guy who currently couldn't pass medical school can do, but chances are they're qualified to do quite a bit. Having more people will lower costs (start paying doctors less).

Also - I'm not convinced that doubling the size of medical school admissions would lower quality at all. Go ahead and have the same standards - right now the problem isn't people not graduating, but people not getting admitted. Also - if you had 10X as many medical schools out there then tuition costs would go down (more competition). Doctors should be well-paid, but not to the extreme they are today.

Also - doctors should have limited hours - certainly no more than 50 per week and no shift longer than 12 hours (with at most one 12 hour shift in a week). Why is it that we can regulate how many hours a truck driver can spend behind the wheel and yet we have interns working 100 hour weeks as some kind of way to weed out anybody who has a shred of humanity in them?

Re:You know what would REALLY help lower the costs

[oldhack]

Mike, a beer on me for this post.

Doctors (and AMA, the selfish and hypocritical lobby) are just as big a problem as pharma, insurance, and legal industries in the mess that is our medical industrial complex.