Technology companies are trying to push people to bring computerized health records into small offices for physician practices. If this ends up going through, it would be very important because it'll be everything more satisfactory, it'll even cut the curbing costs. Three-fourths of the nation's physicians practice medicine with ten or fewer doctors. The first people that will be doing it would be the high investors with all the money and incentives to invest in electronic health records, then comes the small practices. The technology doctors are investing in practice management software. It's used mainly for billing not for electronic health records. More than 120,000 physicians use the practice management software, which was given to them by General Electric but only 35,000 use electronic health records. At Athenahealth, this is for most small practices, 20,000 physicians use its billing software however only 1,100 have also opted for its electronic health records. The plan is have to the payments be reimbursed to the doctors for much of their investment in electronic health records. Dell is actually going to the Houston area to all of the hospitals and doctors office including the small ones. Doctors are seeing it as an organized way to keep up with the patient's medical records, the latest that they have had done, etc. The way they plan up to set up the offices is that the flat-screen PC are to the right of the doctor present and patients sit to the left of it, but the doctors tend to say, "the computer will never get between me and a patient." I think that means that he'll always care for the patient rather than caring just about what the computer's doing, he'll care about their feelings and needs. Another reason why this is a good idea is because if a doctor is on call, a patient calls him with abdominal pain, the doctor can view the patient's medical records and previous history to make an informed diagnosis right then and there. Even when it comes to prescribing medication, he can do that from his home laptop as well. Overall, I think it's a good idea.
2 comments:
i think that its a good idea to have the computerized medical records. it would be more convenient and less time consuming rumaging through all the papers and documents to find the right paper work. this way on the computer you can look up where the documents are and then just have them right there for you, in a neat little folder. i'd rather have a neat folder on the computer than have a messy folder with a bunch of papers sticking out everywhere.
I have mixed emotions about this. I've seen how convenient it is! I had an MRI in one location of the hospital and then went to the doctor the same day. He was able to pull up the MRI on his computer right there in front of me! This was within an hour. Pretty cool. But then I worry that they're doing enough to protect our personal information!
As consumers/patients, we assume that all who use technology are safeguarding our information, but as it turns out, they're not! Twice I've been shopping at a store who compromised my credit card information. I had to be issued a new credit card. How do we know that the medical community is taking the right precautions?
It's not like someone will take our medical records and make money, but it's PERSONAL. We put our trust in the community and hope they're doing what's right.
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