Bush calls for computerized medical records

President Bush on Wednesday evening renewed his call for the use of better technology in hospitals and in doctor's offices for storing and sharing medical records.

Using the high visibility of his State of the Union address, Bush said he will ask Congress to enact sweeping health care reforms, including "improved information technology to prevent medical error and needless costs."

Also in his speech, Bush asked Congress to approve politically controversial legislation such as tax code simplification and Social Security reform, and he vowed his budget for the 2006 fiscal year will include funding for "leading-edge technology," including clean coal, ethanol and hydrogen-fueled cars.

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Wednesday night was not the first time that Bush has talked about electronic medical records. The president devoted a speech to it last week in Cleveland, in which he said: "Most industries in America have used information technology to make their businesses more cost-effective, more efficient and more productive, and the truth of the matter is, health care hadn't."

A White House memorandum released at the same time as the Cleveland speech said that Bush will ask Congress for $125 million for demonstration projects and promote "uniform health information standards" to allow a patient's medical information to be shared among health care workers. Computerization is necessary, the memo argued, because information about a patient is often scattered in many different places and unavailable in an emergency.

Creating a web of interlocking databases raises privacy and security concerns. Paper records stored in file cabinets can be kept under lock and key with little danger of a thief making off with hundreds of thousands of records at once, which happened in a pair of recent incidents at UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley. Paper records are also less vulnerable to mass alteration than electronic ones would be if the computer storing them wasn't properly secured.

During Bush's Cleveland appearance, he was joined by Martin Harris, a general internist and the chief information officer for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Harris tried to allay privacy worries.

"We want to know that the record is secure and that it remains confidential," Harris said. "But information technology actually works perfectly to document that. If you left a medical record on paper in a room, how will you know who saw it? You can't know. When it's in electronic form, when anyone logs on to the system, we know. We know who they are, we know where they are, we know what they were looking at."

[jypeterson]

Interesting

It will be interesting to see if the government standardizes it like they did with HIPAA. It will take a long time for the entire industry to accomodate electronic records as the medical industry is typically antiquated in its patient record/accounting IT systems.

[jypeterson]

Interesting

It will be interesting to see if the government standardizes it like they did with HIPAA. It will take a long time for the entire industry to accomodate electronic records as the medical industry is typically antiquated in its patient record/accounting IT systems.

Computerized?

Well let's hope your medical records are safe. You can do anything with a computer.

http://www.doyousnap.com/portal/albums/39/3.aspx

Computerized?

Well let's hope your medical records are safe. You can do anything with a computer.

http://www.doyousnap.com/portal/albums/39/3.aspx

Big Brother

Why the need to computerize and share my medical information? What's the urgency? I can only guess that the "less governement" party is hell bent on getting itself involved in my bedroom, my body, and my doctors conversations.

I voted Republican because I thought they would live up to their word of smaller government. Instead, it's getting even bigger than ever. Well, that's the last time I'm voting GOP.

Big Brother

Why the need to computerize and share my medical information? What's the urgency? I can only guess that the "less governement" party is hell bent on getting itself involved in my bedroom, my body, and my doctors conversations.

I voted Republican because I thought they would live up to their word of smaller government. Instead, it's getting even bigger than ever. Well, that's the last time I'm voting GOP.

[jv]

Standards first

The biggest problem is the cost to small General Practitioners.

Hospitals should be first primarily for disaster management. Creating a standard for information interchange between hospitals would go a long way toward improving medical reliability.

Patient records should be kept anonymous by ID. When you go from one hospital/practice to another you would temporariliy give them you ID for transfer of records and retain control.

The issue isn't technology - it's lack of standards for storage and transferof information.

[jv]

Standards first

The biggest problem is the cost to small General Practitioners.

Hospitals should be first primarily for disaster management. Creating a standard for information interchange between hospitals would go a long way toward improving medical reliability.

Patient records should be kept anonymous by ID. When you go from one hospital/practice to another you would temporariliy give them you ID for transfer of records and retain control.

The issue isn't technology - it's lack of standards for storage and transferof information.

[jojojon]

Bush misses aim

Health Care? Bush thinks health care is going to the hospital. Listen Bush, you're missing the point. You talk about baseball players being corrupted with steroids but you never talk about the corrupt medical insurance companies in America. I pay over half of my yearly income to health insurance because if I ever got hurt without it I would be screwed. I don't understand how anyone wouldn't be enraged. Maybe instead of focusing on some "they deserve freedom" story about the Iraqi people; Bush should focus on enforcing freedom in our own country. Ward Churchill (the controcersial professor at Colorado university) has been forced to step down from a position he earned from hard work and intellectual risk. The uneducated masses that voted for George W. are not to blame. It is the people who reduced funding for education that are. they are the ones who "deserve to be shot" (quoted from someone offended by Ward churchill's book, protected by the first amendment). Wake up America, being stupid isn't cool. I'll defend America to the death, but I won't defend an erosion of intellignece or a caste system (which the U.S. is developing).
-Monte Garroutte

[jojojon]

Bush misses aim

Health Care? Bush thinks health care is going to the hospital. Listen Bush, you're missing the point. You talk about baseball players being corrupted with steroids but you never talk about the corrupt medical insurance companies in America. I pay over half of my yearly income to health insurance because if I ever got hurt without it I would be screwed. I don't understand how anyone wouldn't be enraged. Maybe instead of focusing on some "they deserve freedom" story about the Iraqi people; Bush should focus on enforcing freedom in our own country. Ward Churchill (the controcersial professor at Colorado university) has been forced to step down from a position he earned from hard work and intellectual risk. The uneducated masses that voted for George W. are not to blame. It is the people who reduced funding for education that are. they are the ones who "deserve to be shot" (quoted from someone offended by Ward churchill's book, protected by the first amendment). Wake up America, being stupid isn't cool. I'll defend America to the death, but I won't defend an erosion of intellignece or a caste system (which the U.S. is developing).
-Monte Garroutte