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Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Volume 36 Issue 20
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Electronic health care system would help U.S.By Eric J. Buratty Staff Writer With increasing numbers of people demanding health care, it will only be a matter of time until the old method of medical paperwork is pushed aside all together. The new method of electronic health records will dominate the modernized health care system within the next three years because it allows for easy exchange of clinical data between hospitals, doctors and other forms of medical care. Let’s face it: no one likes filling out the same forms over and over again, whether it is personal information or medical background information. It will be constructive to modernize the current health care system through integrating electronic health records so patients do not have to depend on "snail mail," phone calls and confusing physicians’ notes. So why are hospitals and other medical professions resisting electronic health records? Hospitals argue that the conversion would be a slow, costly process. This is due to rising maintenance costs, lack of technical knowledge by staff, and uncertainty in the investment in the short run. Of course these seem like reasonable implications for why hospitals desire to adopt different standards, but sometimes change is good. The process would not only be environmentally friendly by saving billions of dollars each year on paper, but would also reduce time spent filling out the same information everywhere patients go, and reduce the time spent reading physicians’ illegible notes. The slow start would require some sacrifices in the short run, but with Obama’s stimulus plan, there should be no reason why some effort cannot be dedicated towards this conversion process. In a professionalized sense, electronic health records would link all kinds of medical care by a keystroke. Maybe the resistance to such a productive capacity is the physicians’ way of saying they care more about their budget than our health. Comments/Opinions (0) | Add your comment/opinion..
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