Efficiency. If technology can make health care records more efficient, through an integrated system of electronic health care records, an immense amount of time currently wasted due to incompatibility between systems can be saved.
Less than 10% of health care providers use electronic records, and there are hundreds of programs currently marketed (1). The problem is, many of these programs do not share records between each other, so individual health care providers often have to resort to recopying and scanning records.
To reduce health care costs, it’s crucial that computers are used to do the tasks that they do much much better than humans; which includes storing data and making it quickly retrievable and transmittable. Humans manually copying and filing records is not efficient, and raises costs.
The US government is taking steps to increase efficiency in medical records. 17 billion dollars in stimulus money is being allocated toward electronic health records, and the ability to transmit and share records is required. Additionally, Congress may start cutting the Medicare and Medicaid payments to health institutions who haven’t instituted interoperable electronic health care records (records that can be transmitted and shared) by 2014 (1).
Hopefully, software will soon be available to allow the different electronic health care record programs used by medical practices to share patient records, reducing errors and administrative costs.
1. Work Begins on National E-Health Record Network. By David Twiddy, Associated Press. 9/31/2009
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