The federal government is pressuring doctors to transfer patient records from paper to computerized form.
What we know about that record transfer is that it will be expensive. What we don’t know is whether it will reduce medical errors and costs as promised.
On the expense side, the government is providing tens of billions of dollars worth of “incentives” to help doctors make the switch. (There are penalties for doctors who do not go along with the change fast enough to suit the government.)
But on the benefit side, things are a lot murkier.
Reporting on a 2009 study in the American Journal of Medicine, The Wall Street Journal noted that “hospitals with more-advanced electronic systems fared no better than other hospitals on measures of administrative costs, on average, even if the systems ‘might modestly improve’ performance on certain measures of the quality of care. Meanwhile, many doctors and nurses say they’re frustrated with the technology. While some say electronic records have improved the way they practice medicine, many others say the systems are time-consuming distractions that take away from patient care.”
Eight years ago, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles bought a $30 million electronic system.
“But doctors said it slowed them down, and some said it put patients at risk,” The Wall Street Journal reported. In the past, a doctor who wanted to order a blood count, for instance, simply would have written “blood count” on a paper order. But under the new system, doctors had to log onto their computers and scroll through lots of screens to place the same order.
“When confronted with long lists of options, if people are pressed for time or they don’t understand the difference between the options, they might pick the wrong option,” said Dr. Michael Langberg, the hospital’s chief medical officer. That meant the wrong test or drug might be prescribed. Cedars-Sinai ultimately went back to paper orders until the problems could be resolved.
We do not think it is rational for the government to dictate things such as precise record-keeping techniques — especially when it is not even certain that a rapid switch to electronic medical records will save money and reduce errors.