How the Healthcare CIO Saves Lives: #3 Decreases our Reliance on Paper

The U.S. healthcare system is run by highly talented people that are using outmoded forms of communication. Many clinicians still use paper files and faxes to communicate and lack the basic infrastructure to communicate efficiently regarding critical care decisions. As health insurance companies and health providers struggle with efforts to control costs, reduce administration and improve efficiencies, we need to break out of the paper-oriented approach. With EMR and HIE initiatives, the Federal Government has clearly decided that now is the time to go electronic and electronically integrate healthcare systems.

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Unfortunately, there are many challenges to adopting electronic medical records (EMR):

• More than 50% or physician practices are three physicians or less. These small practices will find it difficult to invest and adopt EHR systems. Many physicians lack the knowledge and skills to use these electronic tools and solutions.
• Physicians have a perception that these tools will impact their productivity and interaction with their patients.
• Healthcare providers that have adopted these electronic solutions have seen limited analytic data or information to improve or change their healthcare delivery practices.

Despite these challenges, the benefits of electronic health data outweigh the risks. Ultimately, an introduction of EMR will lead to dramatically increased efficiency and more exacting communication around critical patient care decisions.

Some time ago, one of my colleagues recommended the book “Paper Kills 2.0 – How Health IT Can Save Your Life and Your Money”. After having given it a read myself, I highly recommend it. There are some tragic stories inside that will literally cause your hair to stand on end. The bottom line is that physicians need the very best information in order to make the best decisions. Oftentimes these decisions need to be made with little time to spare. Imagine trying to make these critical decisions based on lab results that are a photocopy of a fax of a photocopy. Though any change is difficult, the paper-based medical world is not a pretty reality. Even further, one need only look as far as the recent tornado disasters to realize how important electronic medical records were in providing critical emergency care.