CBS News reports on EHR efforts
By popular demand, here is the video of David Pogue's report on the Obama Administration's efforts to digitize patient records in the U.S.
"Charting a New Course," CBS News (September 13, 2009).
New York Times interviews David Blumenthal
David Pogue, a reporter for the New York Times, posted the transcript of his interview with Dr. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health IT. Mr. Pogue interviewed Dr. Blumenthal for a CBS news report on digitization of healthcare in America (the video is available after the jump).
Here are some highlights from the interview:
On current state of health IT in the US:
We found that about 17 percent of physicians in 2008 had adopted an electronic health record, and about ten percent of hospitals. <...> The rest is paper. It's basically the same system that physicians have used since Hippocrates, which is writing on some piece of paper.
On reimbursement penalties for those failing to achieve meaningful use by 2015:
From 2011 to 2015, there is a bonus. The Congress has put $45 billion on the table to ease physicians and hospitals into this new world of computerized medicine.After 2015, if you have not adopted, and you see Medicare or Medicaid patients, you may experience a penalty. 2015 is six years off. Six years is plenty of time for physicians to get themselves organized to put a record in place and avoid those penalties.
On cost of EMRs:
On average, the cost is between $40,000 and $50,000, of which about a third is the software and the hardware, about a third is the cost of getting it set up in the office, and about a third is maintaining it. Much of the expense is related to the cost of implementing and the cost of maintaining it over time.
On privacy and security:
Privacy and security are foundational to a modern health information system. You cannot get the computer into this business without assuring people that their information, their personal information, will be safe.
So we are looking at the best possible technical solutions, technical protections, to privacy and security. We want to make sure that we have looked at every opportunity for encryption, every security device that the best minds can think of, to make information safer. We've got it in other parts of the industry, but we don't have it for healthcare. So I think that's a very important agenda item for us.
<...>
There are two kinds of anxieties. One is that their data may be used for purposes that they haven't authorized it. So if they haven't authorized their personal data to be used for research, they don't want it for that purpose. And the way the law gets around that problem is by saying that information should be de-identified; that is, it should be abstracted from the record in a way that can never be traced back to that individual.
And then that information can be used for research on drug safety, or research on the value of particular treatments, or anything els that may be useful to human health.
There's another kind of fear, and that is the fear of the breach or break-in, or hacking. And there have been some examples of that.
That's where better encryption and better barriers to hacking are critical. And, you know, we have a new cybersecurity initiative that President Obama has put in process. It's well known that the security of information is a national need for defense purposes. It's also, I think, a very important need for this domestic policy purpose. So we want to work with that security initiative to know that we've taken advantage of everything that the federal government and the computer industry knows about how to keep records secure.
Finally, the big picture:
Well, it's a big challenge, it's an exciting challenge, and a historic challenge. There's nothing that's worth doing that's easy to do in life, and this is one of those.
But I really think that history is on the side of this activity. To be a 21st-century physician, to be a 21st-century hospital, we can't record data the same way the Greeks did in 500 B.C. We've gotta move to use the computer to support our work. And that's what we're trying to do.
There'll be bumps on the road. We're not gonna be perfect. We'll make mistakes. But I think the wind is at our back in terms of the historical trends. And we'll get there, sooner or later.
"Computerized Health Records," New York Times (October 15, 2009).
"Charting a New Course," CBS News (September 13, 2009).
