Clinton: Time to digitize all Americans' medical records
At the start of a new drive in New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday's primary, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton addresses hundreds of supporters in a Nashua airplane hangar.
(Credit: Anne Broache/CNET News.com)NASHUA, N.H.--In a new push to win over New Hampshire voters on Friday, Hillary Clinton highlighted a technological facet of her pledge to revamp the nation's healthcare system: ditch paper medical records.
Digitizing the vital documents will not only cut an estimated $77 billion in costs, but "much more important than that, we would save lives," the New York senator said Friday morning to a few hundred cheering, sign-waving supporters huddled around the stage in a drafty airplane hangar here.
Clinton's early-morning return to the Granite State, which is scheduled to hold its primary election Tuesday, followed a third-place finish in Iowa's first-in-the-nation contest on Thursday night. According to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Friday, Clinton is currently leading the Democratic pack in the New Hampshire race, with 32 percent to Sen. Barack Obama's 26 percent.
Clad in a dark suit, Clinton touched on the economy ("it's going to be a tough economic year," she predicted, citing the most recent unemployment statistics) and her electability (she has the mettle to "withstand the Republican attack machine," she said) before taking questions from the audience.
Her pledge to create a nationwide, electronic health-record-keeping system came in response to a comment from an audience member who, by Clinton's description, "lost her daughter because her medical records were not readily available."
"We go online to buy things from Mongolia, we go online to do our banking, but we can't go online in a secure, encrypted, confidential way to get access to our medical records," she lamented.
Some hospitals and medical offices, of course, are already wired, but right now, most people aren't able to view their records electronically. Naturally, companies like Microsoft have been plotting ways to fill that void. At least one recent study found security and privacy vulnerabilities remain as e-health advocates forge ahead with their plans.
In any case, it's not a new idea on Clinton's part, as she has been working with other senators for years on passing legislation aimed at getting electronic medical records systems off the ground.
Nor is it a partisan issue. President Bush long called for greater computerization of health records, and former president Bill Clinton has also advocated for such action in recent months. (He, by the way, was on hand Friday to introduce his wife and daughter Chelsea, who made a smiling but silent appearance just before her mother's speech.)
In between discussion of health care, troop withdrawal from Iraq, and protecting manufacturing jobs within the United States, Clinton also revived talk of her previously-unveiled plans to enlist higher-tech alternatives in her energy policy.
As part of her push to wean the United States off foreign oil, Clinton vowed again to yank subsidies from oil companies and to require them to pay into a "Strategic Energy Fund" that will bankroll research on new technologies and clean, renewable energy sources.
"We're serious this time," she said. "America is really serious."
Heck - the FBI couldn't get there simple "VIRTUAL CASE FILE" system on bad guys implemented.
How many BILLIONS wasted there?
existing law that gets in the way of hospitals and doctors taking
good care of patients. Costs go down, not up. Deaths go down,
too. More records can be kept and computer analyzed for
obscure and rare conditions. Many safe medicines cannot be
taken with other perfectly safe medicines because they interact
in the body and poison people. Physician error /hospital system
error is the 4th leading cause of death in America.
A lot of records are required to be on paper, for instance.
(insert favorite "protect us from terrorists" phrase here:__________)
information flow with the object of fewer physician caused
deaths.
Hillary's plan allows people to maintain full confidentiality and
control of their medical records with their personal physicians.
Physicians and physician supervised medical professionals and
technicians (EMT's) would have graded access with only your
personal physician having unhindered access granted by you.
Specialists being consulted, or Emergency Room doctors would
get what your personal physician feels is appropriate. Hiding
medically pertinent information may be allowable, too, even
your ethnic identity, your religion, arrest records for drug
convictions, and so on. So if you have had repeated, recent ER
admissions for drug intoxication and you are running the
country as commander-in-chief, governor, or Supreme Court
Justice, CEO or gas station attendant, you will have nothing to
fear from Hillary's plan.
They would have faster access, that's all. Digital records are a
lot cheaper than paper ones. The physician interface to the
records also need not change, so if doctors are used to calling a
transcription service to dictate for charts, nothing will change. If
they make a mistake, however, they or their staff (as they
choose) will get a warning about it. For instance, if a drug-drug
interaction is computer-found for a patient who is seeing
another doctor simultaneously, they would have an opportunity
to withhold or change medication 'on the fly', discuss the matter
with their patient, or confer with their colleague to straighten
things out instead of poisoning a patient and causing harm to
them. No physician would want to prescribe more than 30
Tylenol tablets to anyone, for instance, but that can happen, and
does, with the present system. (30 Tylenol tablets in 24 hours
can kill you.)
headlines screaming "200 Million Medical Records on Stolen
Laptop".
Billions for alternative energy research? You mean we don't already
have a whole bunch of alternatives ready to go but for the
repressive tactics of the oil companies? Who knew?
Bush has brought to this problem. I work with electronic medical
records every day. They are not a panacea. Systems are
proprietary and data is often not easily portable. These problems
mean that many of the advantages of electronic records cannot
be realized.
So, before we run and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on
JUNK, let's have some common sense ground rules. Among these
should be a common, extensible and open format for records.
That way the data would be truly portable and no institution
would be bound to one company's system. In a sense, the oldest
form of electronic medical record are CT scans. Right now, each
scanner company uses its own proprietary format that may not
be readable by another institution's equipment. You would think
that after decades of CT scans that the Feds would have
required that scanners all be capable of a common data format,
but no. Even now, we have to have films of CT scans printed at
hospital A and hand carried to hospital B in all too many cases. It
really slows things down.
Bottom line is that it is in patient's interests to have records
electronic (as long as things are secure). We need to take simple
steps toward that future now and not rush into an hysteria of
spending.
The $77 Billion figure comes from a Rand Study funded by IT interests and completed in 2005 before over 160 million electronic records were reported lost - increasing the liability and expense of maintaining EHRs. It can only get more expensive from here because there is simply nothing holding down the expense of being a HIPAA-covered entity, and entrepreneurs have candidates like Hillary Clinton by the pockets. Patients interests are never considered. Darrell Pruitt DDS
cc: spamgroup
Sorry about that, we had an intern format the HDs yesterday.
When that succeeds (15 years down the road) or fails miserably, then we can "talk" about my medical records.
Pencil pushers that have no real purpose.
control. She's a lot more George Bush than she is Thomas
Jefferson.
Hillary Clinton comes in as its happening making the
suggestion and ultimately to take credit for a change already in
progress.
This similar to the move to go "green."
Whereas the move toward energy efficiency is occurring based
on the higher price of energy, making alternatives worthwhile
based simply on economics, it has little or nothing to do with
the near religious moniker of being "green."
This era of high energy costs making energy saving technology
feasible has been discussed for decades.
Just as Hillary is coming in to appear prophetic on this issue, Al
Gore came in, attached an Armagedean scenario to the
efficiency movement.
The gullible always seem to follow, marching in lock step. The
young and hip seem especially vulnerable to these tricks,
providing opportunity for these and other politicians willing to
exploit ignorance.
All hail the modern stooge.
I can understand that you don't feel it is right for Clinton to "take credit for a change already in progress", but I don't think demoralizing comments such as calling the general public "gullible" and Clinton "the modern stooge" are necessary in order to express your opinions.
for efficiency and cost of care with the current technology that is
available. Without addressing interoperability of electronic medical
records, ease of use for every specialty of medicine, and security
that does not completely cripple usability and accessibility, this will
be another government regulation that helps make this countries
health care the world's most expensive without being the best.
There are so many medical people and places that seem to own your medical records that I often feel as though I have no rights at all. They should not be allowed to change entries in patients medical records, add a note, yes, remove information, NO.
I saw a doctor for over ten years, when he died I asked his wife for my records, she said she could not give them to me. I said, okay, I will fill out proper forms and you may send them to my doctor. I filled out requests from my Internist and two physiatrists, then finally a government oversight committee. This dragged on for over five years this is what happened.
She refused to send the records to any of them. When the government contacted her she replied: "I destroyed all my husbands? records."
We are not talking about a grade school drop out here but a woman who worked with her husband, headed her own agency and was a Certified Social Worker.
Someone tell me where there is any honor, ethics, concern for patient welfare or human decency in this? But, she was not an MD, so she could not be held liable for not giving up the records nor for destroying them.
Ten years of information gone! Medications that did and did not work for me are forever gone. Psychological problems, personal, family, work, health history were all tossed away by an arrogant person with no conscience.
Ask me, she is either a psychopath herself or her husband's death turned her into a vicious, spiteful and irresponsible person. Sadly, still practicing and doing who knows how much damage to other patients.
It ought to be the law, Federal Law that anyone entrusted with medical records must keep them for a minimum of seven years. They ought to have to sign an oath to protect those records and turn them over to the patient upon written request or to the physician of the patient?s choice. No excuses, no wiggle room and a severe penalty for failure to fulfill that responsibility.
Senator Clinton is right about that, our records ought to be computerized and guarded but it ought to be equally, legally clear, to whom those records belong. They ought to belong to the doctor who wrote them and the patient who is the subject of those records.
The current electronic medical records vendors are selling Walled Gardens.
Once again we have failed to learn from history.
Its about time we start funding their Med School and in return pay them less for their service.
WooHoo...
2006 "Audacity of Hope." (p 185).
Digitizing has been written into his healthcare proposal since
May 29th 2006 on barackobama.com
+=+=+=+=+
Lowering Costs Through Investment in Electronic Health
Information Technology Systems:
Most medical records are still stored on paper, which makes it
hard to coordinate care, measure quality or reduce medical
errors and which costs twice as much as electronic claims.
Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to
move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of
standards-based electronic health information systems,
including electronic health records, and will phase in
requirements for full implementation of health IT. Obama will
ensure that patients' privacy is protected."
+=+=+=+=+
This rip-off is another instance of the Clintons' unethical--do
ANYTHING to win--campaign managers, Mark Penn and Howard
Wolfson. They have no end of of playing games with the other
candidates by STEALING, often word-for-word, their campaign
slogans, philosophy and rhetoric.
First, Clinton tried a copycat phrase, "Turn up the heat" against
Obama's "Fired up? Ready to go!"--a story he shares with
supporters about an elderly woman using this chant to introduce
Barack last spring (which got him very pumped up. Barack has
sent the same message out through the entire campaign who is,
you guessed it, very pumped up).
When turning up the heat against Republicans didn't work
against Obama's call to include Republicans and independents in
this election, the Clintons went a step further:
They took Obama's phrase and made it hers. Is this to pit
volunteer against volunteer? "Hey, that's my candidate's phrase!"
"No, it's mine!"
Then a whole litany of thefts came rolling out of Hillary's
campaign.
In one of the Philly debate she stole Obama's line "I am a
candidate for change" and promptly hid her smirk behind a glass
of water as she looked up at him.
This week she's the "candidate of hope." But this is vintage
Obama printed on T-shirts and yard signs.
"I'm looking under the hood and kicking the tires." Clinton used
last week. But was heard in a debate months ago. Obama has
been using it regularly since summer.
like this doesn't happen overnight.
How uninformed does someone have to be to think it was either
Obama's or Hillary's idea?
Get your heard out of the sand.
- Good idea - from Obama
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by patintexas
January 4, 2008 7:27 PM PST
- Did she just now figure this out?
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Reply to this comment
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- Get a clue.
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by William Crow
January 4, 2008 8:57 PM PST
- You really think Obama thought about doing this first? The move
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (39 Comments)See: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/
to digital files has been going on for years.
Wake up!