Erecords Bonus: The Google Solution
Getting from universal implementation of e-records to universal information sharing is not an insignificant proposition. There are all kinds of privacy and software compatibility issues, and there’s still the hospital administrators’ worry that eliminating redundancies would mean driving revenue down.
One possible answer to the first concern is putting electronic records straight into the hands of patients. Google Inc. is now testing a service that would store medical records for patients. Dr. John Halamka, the chief information officer of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Halamka, who is also the CEO of MassShare, one of several organizations that works on electronic medical records issues in the state, said Google’s service would help solve the privacy problem, since no one objects to sharing records with patients themselves, and the patients can pass them on to other hospitals or doctors.
As for the economic threat to hospitals, Halamka said he and his colleagues are taking a practical approach by starting their record-sharing efforts with projects that would benefit everyone involved.
One project that started two years ago is an electronic prescription system that lets a doctor check a patient’s insurance to make sure a drug will be covered, and check his prescription history to avoid dangerous drug interactions, before writing a prescription. Then, the doctor can hit a button and send the prescription directly to the patient’s pharmacy.
Halamka said the process means patients avoid the nasty surprise of getting to the pharmacy window and finding a drug isn’t covered, pharmacists are spared from deciphering doctors’ handwriting and doctors don’t end up getting angry phone calls from all sides.
“Everybody saves money and gets happy,” Halamka said. “Therefore they’re all willing to put into place.”
Ultimately, Micky Tripathi, president and CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, said he expects everyone involved in the health care industry to see that it is in their best long-term interest to put a better system into place. While some may complain about the costs of data sharing, he said, “I have yet to be in a conversation where one of them says I’m going to block this from happening because of our parochial interest in this. … If we’re building our business on waste in the system then we don’t have a business anyway.”
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments