Let’s force doctors to spend a lot of money to become technology dependent and adopt electronic health records when the old way of doing things was working just fine. And hey–as a bonus, our health information is now more vulnerable to hacking and we can lose some privacy along the way! Electronic health records haven’t saved a single life or a single dollar, but they have created a lot of expense, confusion, and tremendous demoralization for our health care providers. It wasn’t broken, and it shouldn’t have been “fixed.” If the Republican Congress was smart, it would repeal this onerous, useless provision of Obamacare.
There are a lot of things the Republicans would do if they were smart. On the other hand, I can understand why they don’t want to repeal this abomination piece meal. They need to scrap the whole thing and start over, but it won’t happen until we get someone in the White House who actually understands markets and actually gives a damn about others.
Not to mention premiums skyrocketing double digits, millions not being able to afford Obama-cide because they aren’t poor enough for subsidies but too rich for medicaid. So they go without.
All is proceeding as predicted.
That same class of people who make too much to get subsidies but too little to get the silver plans that you must buy if you use subsidies, likely can’t afford to see the doctor or treat any illnesses because they have to shell out $10k or so before insurance helps pay for anything other than a yearly checkup.
And before Jim chimes in that yearly checkups were either illegal or highly expensive before Obamacare, I will just point out they were either free or included as a “You may visit the doctor X times a year for whatever reason.” Which my new policy no longer has.
I am a programmer at one of the largest research/teaching hospitals in the United States. We have been working on changing over to electronic medical records for literally forty years. It is a very big job, involving figuring out how one task after another that the hospital does can be made more efficient. One task at a time. There is no way to hurry it, and forcing people to hurry it just gets in our way of taking care of our patients.
“It is a very big job, involving figuring out how one task after another that the hospital does can be made more efficient. One task at a time. There is no way to hurry it, and forcing people to hurry it just gets in our way of taking care of our patients.”
I’m sorry, you lost me. Are you saying that hospitals are working on time-and-motion, LEAN, and other similar studies for the base tasks BEFORE even addressing how electronic records fit into the picture? And that the streamlining of ALL tasks needs to take place before integrating electronic records?
Or is this in parallel to the electronic records process? That is, “we go through one task from start to finish, optimize it, and then integrate it into the electronic records schema before moving on to the next process”?
Has anyone looked at similar tasks within the hospital to create a high-level view that groups similar tasks together, so that they can all be optimized simultaneously (or even re-working a few closely-similar tasks to make them a similar task)? It honestly doesn’t seem to me that it should be as complex of a problem to solve as it’s often made out to be (by those who get paid by the hour to solve such problems).
Of course, malpractice and tort are a big part of the task complexity as well. The more people sue their doctors and hospitals and win for 7, 8, and 9-figure sums, the more double-checks are added to tasks. Before you know it, you have 6 people all doing the same thing and checking each others’ work, and 90% of the task becomes an exercise in CYA, rather than actually caring for the patient.
To be fair (in terms of spreading the blame), government is guilty of this task complexity and CYA as well, which is why everyone hates going to the DMV or pulling a permit just to re-shingle their house.
Let’s be fair.
The effort to impose electronic medical records upon the industry was highlighted with joint appearances by Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrinch touting the advantages of high tech. A bill was making it’s way thru Congress in 2007-08 which would have implemented the requirement, and GW Bush indicated he would sign that bill.
HOWEVER, the Democratically controlled Senate decided it would rather have the issue than the solution, and that they’d rather NOT give Hillary Clinton an “accomplishment” upon which to base her 2008 presidential campaign. The bill for electronic medical records died without action.
It passed in 2009, but not as part of ObamaCare. It was included, instead, as a rider among other projects in the so-called “stimulus” bill.
So, as a matter of fact, even if ObamaCare had been turned back, (By Scott Brown’s election, say) the E-Medical Records problem would still exist.
Ask Newt about that, next time he’s available.
If Obama signed it into law, then he and the Congress that passed the bill bear the responsibility for its success or failure. The “it was not officially part of the ACA” protestation is not effective. The government always intended to use electronic medical records as a control tool, any added efficiencies would be viewed as gravy.
“The effort to impose electronic medical records upon the industry was highlighted with joint appearances by Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrinch touting the advantages of high tech. A bill was making it’s way thru Congress in 2007-08 which would have implemented the requirement, and GW Bush indicated he would sign that bill. ”
That effort was wrong…just as wrong as Obamacare.
Newt does a little better than some pseudo-conservatives, but he’s forgotten the main idea of letting the people with the smarts do the thinking and acting. He fails as a small government conservative. Always has.
If a free market were permitted to operate, medical providers would adapt such technology as offers a favorable price/quality point. But big goobernment idiots never look at the free market as a viable option, instead favoring naked force.