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April 17, 2009In addition to improving accuracy in medical records and quality of care in individual hospitals and practices, widespread adoption of EMRs could have the potential to improve quality of care on a much larger scale.
As more physicians and hospitals adopt EMRs and medical records are systematically moved from pieces of paper to indexable, analyzable data sets, the healthcare industry would have increased capacity to study trends, treatments, and effects at a level never possible before.
As this commentary entitled “Electronic Medical Records Could Help Find Cures, Speed Progress, Cut Costs” points out:
“Electronic medical records (EMR), like health insurance, benefit from being spread over the widest pool possible. A system that aggregates and cross-references data from hundreds of millions of patients can find statistical evidence far more efficiently than today’s statistical modeling for health problems and solution improvement.
“Allowing for non-identified EMR sharing across the system creates a universal pool of data in which drug side-effects, treatment failure or success rates, disease history, specific organ damage or healing, and all sorts of incidence of drug interactions and health specifics can be cross-referenced, spurring a massive amount of data-rooted research and improving quality of care and treatment success rates.”
Although the industry is far from reaching this point, due to debates about privacy and the potential implications of centralizing health data, the point is good food for thought. Access to relevant data and the ability to analyze large sets of statistically significant data could speed research and healthcare advancements by leaps and bounds.
Another commentary from Fast Company states:
“The dream of interoperable EMRs, which would create a mass database where we can detect epidemics and study drug interactions, has yet to be realized. Financial incentives from the government and private insurers may help, but there are other hurdles to overcome.”
“The fundamental problem is that doctors get paid for service, not wellness. The ideal is to find real patterns in health, safety, and wellness in EMRs, and reward accordingly. That requires the widespread adoption of a truly interconnected system that doesn’t quite exist yet. Even in the widely used VA EMR system, some data are recorded and shared, and some aren’t. Once we solve that problem, it will take the determination of all parties — including the government, through reform to Medicare and Medicaid — to put in place a new way of paying doctors and health systems.”
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