Prez Says Electronic Medical Records More Accurate, Will Save Americans Billions — Not True
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on June 24, 2009
I’ve read for quite a while now about the myth that electronic medical records will save taxpayers billions of dollars and increase efficiency and accuracy in medical records; be sure to read this detailed exposé at the Wall Street Journal, Obama’s $80 Billion Exaggeration. at a glance, without any scrutiny or authoritative sources to back his claim, what Obama says sounds true. But it isn’t. The WSJ article is a real eye opener.
The excerpt below gives another example of why the belief that electronic medical records will save money isn’t true.
Excerpt from Neovatara:
Electronic Medical Records save money? – I have NEVER seen any evidence to prove this.
Hillary Clinton, followed by the President, made this assertion during the campaign last year without any evidence to support the claim. Mr. Obama now claims that $80 billion could be saved using EMR. This is absurd. The basis for the claim was a RAND Corporation report (partially funded by Hewlett Packard and Xerox, who may benefit from EMR implementation) that suggested that EMR could save money. Of course, that was in 2005; since then, there have been numerous studies that have showed the opposite.
For example, A 2008 study published in Circulation, a premier cardiology journal, assessed the influence of electronic medical records on the quality of care of more than 15,000 patients with heart failure. It concluded that “current use of electronic health records results in little improvement in the quality of heart failure care compared with paper-based systems.” Now, don’t get me wrong; as a physician I love the EMR. It likely will improve patient care and decrease in-hospital mistakes. But the cost savings are highly suspect. It likely will cost more to implement EMR, even though I support its use.
From Wall Street Journal:
To be sure, there are real benefits from electronic medical records. Physicians and nurses can readily access all the information on their patients from a single site. Particularly helpful are alerts in the system that warn of potential dangers in the prescribing of a certain drug for a patient on other therapies that could result in toxicity. But do these benefits translate into $80 billion annually in cost-savings? The cost-savings from avoiding medication errors are relatively small, amounting at most to a few billion dollars yearly, as the RAND consultants admit.
Other potential cost-savings are far from certain. The impact of medication errors on malpractice costs is likely to be minimal, since the vast majority of lawsuits arise not from technical mistakes like incorrect prescriptions but from diagnostic errors, where the physician makes a misdiagnosis and the correct therapy is delayed or never delivered. There is no evidence that electronic medical records lower the chances of diagnostic error.
All of us are conditioned to respect the printed word, particularly when it appears repeatedly on a hospital computer screen, and once a misdiagnosis enters into the electronic record, it is rapidly and virally propagated. A study of orthopedic surgeons, comparing handheld PDA electronic records to paper records, showed an increase in wrong and redundant diagnoses using the computer — 48 compared to seven in the paper-based cohort.
But the propagation of mistakes is not restricted to misdiagnoses. Once data are keyed in, they are rarely rechecked with respect to accuracy. For example, entering a patient’s weight incorrectly will result in a drug dose that is too low or too high, and the computer has no way to respond to such human error.
Center for Health Transformation: Healthcare That Works: Answering President Obama’s Challenge of Finding What Works (pdf)
Additional reading:
Jim Blazsik: BOYCOTT ABC on June 24th!
The American Spectator: Gotta’ Love Those Dems on Health Care and House Dems’ Health Care Plan Includes Gov’t Plan
Goodtimepolitics: The White House Admits Americans Will Be Forced Out of Their Current Health Care Plans
Founding Bloggers: Horrific Health Care Headlines From UK – Our Socialized Medical Future!
Gary Graham, Big Hollywood: Obama-Care Can Kill You
Jewish World Review: Far East illustrates the limitations and dangers of universal health care
Infidels Paradise: Obama/Dems Cutting Tens Of Billions In Medicare After Saying It Was A Sin To Do So
Patterico’s Pontifications: Dialing 911 for Obamacare
Betsy’s Page: How “best health practices” works in Britain
The B.S. Report: Easy As ABC…President Obama’s Official “State-Run” Media
The TIW Blog: Counterprotests not enough to end tyranny
Hot Air Green Room: Rocks, Hard Places & Obamacare
Street Knowledge Media: ABC Turns Programming Over To OBAMA; News To Be Anchored From Inside White House
Gary Graham, Big Hollywood: Obama Wants to Buck Us Up
Hot Air: Will ObamaCare threaten medical innovation? and Obama: Let’s work together to destroy American health care by year’s end and Video: Are the elderly cost effective? and Oh my: Health care, amnesty, climate change bills all suddenly in trouble and Dems retreating on healthcare and Video: ObamaCare an “Old Joke”; Update: Cost now $1.6 trillion
Inoperable Terran: House health-care bill adds $600 billion in new taxes and Oh my: Health care, amnesty, climate change bills all suddenly in trouble
Founding Bloggers: Horrific Health Care Headlines From UK – Our Socialized Medical Future!
JustOneMinute: If The Rain And Clouds Aren’t Depressing You…
John Goodman, Cato’s Letter (pdf): Five Myths of Socialized Medicine
American Thinker: Back to ACORN General Hospital
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Ronald Reagan’s Clarity… “The Gipper” Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine and Bad News: Sen. Feingold Admits What We’ve Suspected All Along: Obama’s “Public” Health Care Plan Meant to Ultimately Push Americans to Single-Payer Health Care and A “Must Read” » American Thinker: “Back to ACORN General Hospital” | Obama’s Single-Payer Health Care Nightmare and Nightmare: Heritage Foundation Exposes Universal Health Care Myths & Destruction of Free Market and a href=”http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/frugal-blog/frugal-cafe-blogzone/2009/05/08/the-sham-of-socialism-save-america-while-theres-still-time/”>The Sham of Socialism: Save America While There’s Still Time… ‘1984′ Prophesy and Video: Steven Crowder: ‘Socialized Health Care Sucks’ and Heritage Foundation: Myth Exposed – American Health Care System Not Perfect, but Superior to Socialized Health Care and Cautionary Tale: ‘Prime Minister, You Have Run Out of Our Money’
Michelle Malkin: Congress should be required to enroll in Obamacare and Waiting for the health care takeover bill to drop; It’s here: Soak the rich and Welcome to Obamacare Theater and A test for Denver International Airport and Obamacare ground troops at the airport and The drug companies sell out and The Obamacare horror story you won’t hear and Caught on tape: SEIU thuggery and Obamacare bogus statistic of the day and Obamacare bogus statistic of the day, Pt. 2 and Undercover at an Obama health care meet-up and Mobilizing against Obamacare and www.facesofgovernmenthealthcare.com
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