In 2004, President George W. Bush established the goal of creating
electronic health records for most Americans within ten years. Today,
funding provided in the Obama Stimulus plan could make it happen.
Specifically, as much as $21 billion dollars has been earmarked in the
bill.
As part of the stimulus plan, $21 billion dollars will be used to accelerate the use of electronic health records. As planned, all of our health records would be linked together for easy access by all the patient’s health care providers. The new system will likely improve the quality of care and reduce the costs of cumbersome paper records by allowing every person’s doctor to have access to the patient’s complete health care file.
However, having electronic medical records at your fingertips, which can easily be transferred to a hospital or other provider, it is not without critics. There is a major potential for abuse because critics fear that in spite of privacy laws in force to protect the public, employers might inappropriately obtain the medical records of a job applicant and determine that the applicant is too expensive to insure. Moreover, critics also provide that too many administrative burdens would impede the use of electronic records and interfere with the coordination of care.
Prior to the recent stimulus plan, complying with the 2014 goal has been looking like a significant challenge. The percentage of United States doctor offices currently adopting electronic records systems is estimated to be in the single digits. The biggest hurdle has been providing funds to help health care providers buy and implement these IT systems, which are costly and difficult to install. The money earmarked for electronic medical records in the stimulus plan should facilitate President Bush’s 2004 goal. Let’s hope that Congress can balance the above critics’ concerns for the sake of consumers of health care services.
By: Todd C. Ratner, Esq.
Comments