More than 60% of top hospital IT executives in the
US said they planned to deploy computerised electronic health
records over the next year, according to a Healthcare Information
and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) survey.
Last month, US president George Bush strongly backed the use of
electronic health records, saying that computerising health records
would help "avoid dangerous medical mistakes, reduce costs and
improve care".
An electronic health record consists of computerised patient
information - including background medical history, charts and
digitised diagnostic information - that is viewable and accessible
by patients and their doctors.
Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House and now head of the
Center for Health Transformation in Washington, said at an HIMMS
news conference that he would like to see a crash effort to develop
standards, which would make the use of electronic health records
possible by this September.
Gingrich added that the development of standards for electronic
health records - which would convert many of today's paper-based
health care records into digital information - is "not rocket
science", and would help cut unnecessary costs from the US health
care budget. He cited as an example the NHS's multibillion-pound
drive, which is designed to provide every person in the UK with an
electronic record.
To illustrate the staggering growth in health care costs which,
he believed IT can help control, Gingrich said that the US
Department of Defense's budget for providing health care to
active-military personnel and their families will soon equal its
procurement budget. Unless there is a dramatic curb on health care
costs, the department will soon spend as much on health care in a
year as it spends on equipment.
Gingrich urged health care providers to adopt a model similar to
that used by online travel agencies and offer discounted rates for
care online in an effort to drive down health care costs in the
same way travel sites drive down airfares.
Peter DeVault, a clinical process engineer at Epic Systems, said
that developing a standardised electronic health record does face
considerable hurdles, including buy-in from suppliers with
disparate and nonstandard systems.
Even so, he added, he does not see any major technical
roadblocks to developing electronic health record standards, a task
he believed could be accomplished by next January.
Since electronic health records need to have many hooks to the
network of heath care providers used by any individual, it could
take until the end of the decade to complete the job, DeVault
admitted.
Health care IT in the US still fights a funding battle,
according to executives surveyed by HIMMS. Nearly a quarter of the
executives polled cited lack of adequate financial support as the
key barrier to installing and upgrading IT systems. At the same
time, 47% of the survey respondents said they expect to see an
increase in their IT budgets this year, while 10% forecast a
decrease.
Bob Brewin writes for Computerworld