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Back To Faxes: Doctors Can't Exchange Digital Medical Records
nbauman writes: Doctors with one medical records system can't exchange information with systems made by other vendors, including those at their own hospitals, according to the New York Times. One ophthalmologist spent half a million dollars on a system, but still needs to send faxes to get the information where it needs to go. The largest vendor is Epic Systems, Madison, WI, which holds almost half the medical records in the U.S. A report from RAND described Epic as a "closed" platform that made it "challenging and costly" for hospitals to interconnect.
The situation is bad for patients and costly for medical works: if doctors can't exchange records, they'll face a 1% Medicare penalty, and UC Davis alone has a staff of 22 dedicated to communication. On top of that, Epic charges a fee to send data to some non-Epic systems. Congress has held hearings on the matter, and Epic has hired a lobbyist. Epic's founder, billionaire computer science major Judith Faulkner, said that Epic was one of the first to establish code and standards for secure interchange, which included user authentication provisions and a legally binding contract. She said the federal government, which gave $24 billion in incentive payments to doctors for computerization, should have done that. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology said that it was a "top priority" and just recently wrote a 10-year vision statement and agenda for it.
The situation is bad for patients and costly for medical works: if doctors can't exchange records, they'll face a 1% Medicare penalty, and UC Davis alone has a staff of 22 dedicated to communication. On top of that, Epic charges a fee to send data to some non-Epic systems. Congress has held hearings on the matter, and Epic has hired a lobbyist. Epic's founder, billionaire computer science major Judith Faulkner, said that Epic was one of the first to establish code and standards for secure interchange, which included user authentication provisions and a legally binding contract. She said the federal government, which gave $24 billion in incentive payments to doctors for computerization, should have done that. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology said that it was a "top priority" and just recently wrote a 10-year vision statement and agenda for it.
You say that with snark (I think) but I have a feeling that GoogleHealth would be far superior to anything offered by today's private shit. Though you'd likely have to watch Ads while in traction, or in the waiting room etc...
Considering that it is the informational infrastructure of a hospital system that is the weak point, not the care itself, Google is clearly pretty damn good at that.
AppleMed on the other hand would suck. Have fun paying 3x for premium couture band-aids. They'd likely excel in plastic surgery.
they used M for most of what they did...
No wonder this is screwed up. What does M, head of the British intelligence agency, got to do with American health records?
Change the penalty terms.
if doctors can't exchange records, they'll face a 1% Medicare penalty,
Make that read "If records produced by a medical record system cannot be read by another system, the vendors of the producing and reading systems will face a 1% Medicare penalty".
We could probably get that change legislated by slipping it in a farm subsidy bill someplace.
Have gnu, will travel.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology said that it was a "top priority" and just recently wrote a 10-year vision statement and agenda for it.
Sorry. Vision isn't covered by the ACA.
Have gnu, will travel.