tcitc

Stimulus Funds for E-Records Augur Big Windfall for Small Health Firms

As a physician user of electronic health records, let me say that they do NOT improve the efficiency of practice. What they do is prompt the physician to increase documentation in order to increase reimbursement under the arcane rules promulgated by Medicare. They do permit remote access to office records, but the lack of uniform national standards means that most data has to be re-entered manually. And when the system crashes, our practice is dead in the water.

But the real problem is not that electronic health records are useless - it is that they are being touted as the solution to America's health care cost crisis. That is because it is easier to envision a technological fix than it is a behavioral fix. Electronic records do nothing for the problems of overutilization, conflict of interest and defensive medicine. As H.L. Mencken said, "for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, direct and wrong".