IT and Health Care

Punk CPA writes "Technology Review has some thoughts about why the health care industry has been so slow to adopt IT, while quick to embrace high technology in care and diagnosis. Hypothesis: making medical records available for data analysis might expose redundancy, over-testing, and other methods of extracting profits from the fee-for-service model. My take is that it might also make it much easier to gather and evaluate quality of care information. That would be chum in the water for malpractice suits."

Comments

Anus Transplant

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse has had an anus transplant!

No evil conspiricy

[addsalt]

I wish fear mongering didn't sell articles. Before all the rants begin about how the elitist and corrupt medical community don't want the public to see how they are being manipulated, we need to remember the group of people we are talking about. Most doctors office decisions are made by doctors. While this is a highly skilled group, I wouldn't expect IT to be a strong focus in med school. A much simpler explanation for why IT is not strong in your local doctor's office is because they don't know enough about it to trust it, or understand why and how it could help.

Re:Absolutely

[BVis]

Is it the reaction time of the EMR that's making it 'slow', or your own unfamiliarity with the interface?

If the former, then yes, it's on the EMR authors/IT staff to make the system more responsive. Unfortunately, that frequently means more hardware, which would eat into the profits, and therefore is not approved by the bean counters.

If the latter, then GET OVER IT and learn the fucking interface! Any hospital that adopts a new system should FORCE all doctors with privileges there to complete a training course on the new software, under the threat of losing their privileges. I DON'T CARE IF THE SYSTEM SUCKS. Either try to help make it better, or STFU and do your fucking job.

The good news is that new doctors coming out of medical school don't make any money anymore, thanks to the for-profit HMO system we have in the USA, which requires that doctors see eight patients an hour just to break even. Why is this good news? No more overpaid egomaniac doctors who care more about their tee times than their patients.