It's the Year for E-health Records

Computerworld - My grandmother died of a medical error because the doctor didn't know what medications she was taking. But that's only one reason why I agree with President Bush that every patient in the U.S. should have an electronic health record.
In a recent visit to the Cleveland Clinic, Bush declared that every doctor in the U.S. should use EHRs to improve quality and reduce cost. In his 2004 State of the Union address and during the presidential campaign, he called for the nation to eliminate paper medical records within a decade.
Other countries are doing that. The U.K. has allocated £6 billion to build a network of EHRs. In Sweden, 85% of physicians use EHRs.
Why is all this happening? Simple: The existing medical system is drowning in the inefficiency caused by lack of automation.
Although most industries have automated their supply chains, CRM and back-office processes, only 15% of U.S. physicians use EHRs. The incentives in the current reimbursement system are so misaligned that doctors are reluctant to acquire technology. On average, an electronic medical records system costs $10,000 to install. Most of the benefits of that investment accrue to the insurance companies (89%) and only 11% to the doctors. For the first three to six months, automated workflows reduce the productivity of the physicians, who typically scrawl unreadable notes and orders onto paper. How popular can an investment in technology be if it will reduce your short-term productivity, cost you money, take more of your time and benefit someone else?
But the long-term benefits are staggering. In Massachusetts, approximately 15% of medical care is redundant or inappropriate. That's $4.5 billion per year. The cost of implementing EHRs throughout the state is approximately $1 billion. Wouldn't you make a one-time $100 investment to save $450 every year afterward? Nationwide, the U.S. would save an estimated $144 billion per year by using appropriate IT in our hospitals and doctors' offices.
In addition, approximately 98,000 preventable deaths occur each year because doctors write prescriptions for medications that cause harm -- interactions with other drugs, conflicts with known allergies, or drug restrictions imposed by pre-existing medical conditions. That's equivalent to a 747 crashing every day, killing all aboard. If airlines had this error rate, would you fly?
But given the way the short-term cost-benefit ratio is stacked against the doctors, how can they be induced to adopt EHRs? The easiest way would be for the payers, including Medicare and Medicaid, to pay physicians to acquire the technology and give them incentives to