Full piece on Dallas-area innovations (gated).
However, now that I am experiencing the third such system of my career, I have to say that I’ve been disappointed in virtually all of these hopes. As a former programmer, I have been appalled by the frequently abysmal quality of the programming of these systems, betraying both a lack of any central design and oversight of the user interface and an absence of understanding of the typical tasks and workflow in a primary care office.
The electronic medical record in your future. (spoof)
Wal-Mart is good for nearby housing prices. David Henderson comments.
How the IRS will implement ObamaCare: there are 47 separate statutory provisions.
[E]ven though Campos’ ICD [an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator] can wirelessly transmit data twice a day about his heart and the ICD itself, that information goes only to his doctor. Campos has to make an appointment and ask for a printout. And that, he says, just doesn’t seem fair.
Amy Standen’s article at NPR.
As health-care providers computerize how they take care of us, we’re computerizing how we take care of ourselves—and how we connect back to our doctors. There are apps for managing our prescriptions, tracking blood sugar, and monitoring pacemakers or pregnancies. These tools are critical to breaking the chokehold that paperwork, waiting rooms and endless process have on medicine…
The FDA wants to regulate software used to support the decisions made by patients and health-care providers in the same way it regulates the software embedded in medical hardware such as X-ray machines and infusion pumps. But existing regulations don’t fit the new kinds of apps that developers are making, such as portable health records and programs that let doctors and patients keep track of data on iPads. Some 62% of physicians are now using tablets at the point of patient care…
The FDA’s approach to health-information technology risks snuffing out activity at a critical frontier of health care. Poor, slow regulation would encourage programmers to move on, leaving health care to roil away for yet another generation, fragmented, disconnected and choking on paperwork.
Source: WSJ editorial by Scott Gottleib and J.D. Klienke.
NowClinic, which started in 2010 and has expanded into 22 states, is part of the explosion of Web- and telephone-based medical services that experts say are transforming the delivery of primary health care, giving consumers access to inexpensive, round-the-clock care for routine problems — often without having to leave home or work.
Source: Kaiser Health News.
Despite the widely held assumption that having computer access to patients’ test results will reduce testing, a new study shows that doctors who have such access to tests in the ambulatory care setting are more likely to order imaging and lab tests…
McCormick and his colleagues found that point-of-care electronic access to electronic imaging results, sometimes through an electronic health record, was associated with a 40-70 percent greater likelihood of an imaging test being ordered. Physicians without such access ordered imaging in 12.9 percent of visits, while physicians with access ordered imaging in 18.0 percent of visits.
View full study on the cost of adopting health information technology in Health Affairs.
Doctors who use EHRs may actually order more diagnostic testing, and therefore make health care even more expensive, according to a study published in the Health Affairs journal.
View entire post on electronic health records by Jenny Gold in the Kaiser Health News.
Disease registries enable doctors and hospitals to learn about and share the latest information on best clinical practices for disease and conditions. According to a post on the Health Affairs blog, other countries have adopted disease registries faster than the United States:
For example, Sweden began a registry for hip replacement surgery in 1979. Since then, Sweden has reduced its revision burden (the number of surgeries that have to be repeated as a share of total hip replacements in a given year) to 10 percent—saving some $14 million per year. The authors estimate that if the United States had in place a similar registry for hip-replacement surgery, it would avoid some $2 billion of an expected $24 billion in total costs for these surgeries in 2015.
