In an article titled “Wrong Prescription” of April 6th issue of TIME magazine, the author Scott Haig argues that digitizing medical records is not a panacea for the ever increasing healthcare costs. He in fact states that systems to support EMRs are being driven by the profit motives of payers and care providers and hence they stand to benefit more than patients or physicians. Though, such systems would be able to reduce the “care to billing” cycle-time by passing information instantly to billing, the reverse could also happen, and the care options provided to patients may be dictated by the options provided by the billing system.  Given the fact that the treatment options would be based on acomputer’s assessment of a situation, physicians would no more be able to write anything but would be forced to comply with the limited choices provided by the EMR system leaving very little to the judgment of the physicians themselves.

Though I partially agree, one also need to look at this from a broader perspective. Today the manual systems and siloed processes are more prone to abuse and fraud. The reports about the nexus between pharmaceutical companies and physicians are not new, which has forced the need for greater transparency in donations and contributions made by these companies to physicians’ pet projects. A well integrated system will only reduce such incidences.

In the absence of an electronic system, It would be physically impossible to maintain a paper trail of all the documents leave aside identifying the early warning indicators, understanding the trends and potential risk category a patient may fall into. There would be no interchange of data between hospitals and chances are the same procedure or treatments may be repeated resulting in increased costs. Over a period of time the data collected from such systems (without compromising patient information) can be used to evolve benchmark references for measuring the efficacy of the care administered by physicians and hospitals. The “core measures” specifications of the joint commission are a path in the same direction. If product companies and service organizations can provide service level agreements why not hospitals as well for the treatments they administer? I think over time such a system would benefit payers, hospitals and patients alike, but effective implementation of such systems are key to its success.