Lumetra Healthcare Solutions

Last March the Kaiser Family Foundation, in league with the Harvard School of Public Health and National Public Radio, conducted a survey of the American public’s attitudes and experiences with the healthcare delivery system, as it’s now constituted. Interestingly, three-quarters of the public recognizes the benefit of the use of electronic medical records (EMR) by their physicians as key to improved quality:

• 72% say it’s somewhat likely that their own doctors would do a better job coordinating their care.
• 67% say that the overall quality of care in the country would be improved.
• 58% say that fewer people would get unnecessary medical care.
• 53% say there would be fewer medical errors.

Yet when the dozen or so healthcare reform proposals that Congress is considering are examined, only a handful of them address the issue of electronic medical records and its impact on healthcare quality.

• The Administration’s proposal for reform supports the widespread use of health information technology (HIT) and the development of data on the effectiveness of medical interventions to improve healthcare quality. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (or ARRA, which passed earlier this year) invests $19 billion in HIT, with $17 earmarked as incentives to providers to encourage the adoption of EMR, while also providing $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research.
• The proposal set forth by the Senate Finance Committee seeks to encourage the adoption and use of HIT by expanding eligibility for Medicare HIT incentives in ARRA by including additional providers.

These are early days still, but any major reinvention of the healthcare delivery system that does not include real progress toward electronic medical records will be reform in name only.