Are electronic medical records really a panacea?

There has been a lot of excitement about President Obama's electronic medical records initiative within the Stimulus Package, but a commentary this week suggested that perhaps the excitement is not really warranted because the gain from going electronic is not clear or non-existent at least for some users--probably not what the vendors wanted to hear.

In PC World, Ephraim Schwartz outlines several problems, chief among them being that he says electronic health records reduce profits because of the slow ROI on the initial investment for the physicians, but since the Obama package is basically paying them to get started that should reduce the pain and increase the ROI.

He also cites a lack of standards, information exchange issues and other problems that states have been working on for years to exchange health records data at the state and federal level. It's not as though we are starting from square one here, and as I mentioned in a recent story--Obama's electronic medical records requirements are within reach [1]--my own small physician's office went electronic last year and they made the transition quite smoothly.

The biggest issue Schwartz brings up is around security and this is paramount when exchanging medical data electronically, but certainly there are a similar set of issues around paper. These issues include lack of backup, losing records and what happens to paper records when doctors retire or move. If you had a single electronic medical record that stayed with you and was accessible by doctors anywhere, anytime, it would be far more efficient and could actually save your life because all of your doctors would have the big picture of you medical background, which is not always available in the current paper system.

I don't deny that there are problems, but I also do not believe these problems are insurmountable or that they are any worse than the paper-based system we currently have in place.

For more information, see:
- Schwartz's PC World Article [2]