This brief essay does not mention the serious threat of theft of these electronic files. Knowing the health history of a target, makes him vulnerable to health and wealth attacks. It is shameful that the computer industry easily persuaded clueless medical professionals that this is a beneficial use of funds for medical care. For those who believe that technology will solve all human problems, here is more evidence that technology creates problems, and makes health care worse. It is another example of what may be considered academic wishful thinking, and little to no real world experience.
[From article]
America’s first Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, first arrived at the emergency room of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on September 25 but was sent home by doctors. Three days later he was admitted to the hospital, where he subsequently died. The hospital claimed (and later retracted) that he was sent home because information about his travel history was not readily available in his electronic medical record (EMR). This is silly. There is no excuse for an ER physician’s failure to ask an African man with a fever and abdominal pain about his travel history when news stories about Ebola have been broadcast nightly for weeks. But the fact that the hospital thought to offer this explanation confirms what every American physician knows: hospitals and physicians are being required to buy EMRs that are expensive and difficult to use, and that often interfere with quality care rather than enhance it.
[. . .]
The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus bill set aside $19.2 billion to promote information-technology use. The majority of this funding goes to raising reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid services delivered with “meaningful EMR use.”
[. . .]
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on poorly designed, time-consuming systems. Physicians and nurses struggle to use them and are actually seeing fewer patients. Patients complain that physicians are so busy entering data onto computers that they barely look up. Nurses spend hours entering information rather than verbally communicating important information to physicians and other nurses.
[. . .]
A recent survey of more than 1,000 internists providing ambulatory care by the American College of Physicians found a statistically significant average loss of 48 minutes per clinic day (the equivalent of 4 hours per five-day week) due to EMRs.
[. . .]
Deficiencies in Texas Health Presbyterian’s EMR system were not the primary culprit behind the errant discharge of Thomas Duncan. But it’s possible, too, that the nurse would have had time to alert the physician that Duncan had just returned from Africa if she were not so preoccupied with entering data in the EMR. And it’s possible that the physician would have found this information if the chart wasn’t jammed with unnecessary notes. Finally, it’s possible that the physician might have obtained a more thorough patient history if he or she had spent more time with Duncan and less time with the EMR.
http://www.city-journal.org/2014/eon1016jz.html
Joel Zinberg
Ebola and Electronic Medical Records
EMRs are costly, difficult to use, and time-consuming, taking precious time away from doctors and patients.
16 October 2014
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