Computer health records seen saving US $81 billion
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Computerized medical records could save the United States more than $81 billion annually through greater efficiencies and reduced errors, according to a study published on Wednesday.
The RAND study appearing in Health Affairs journal follows a report in the same publication in January that predicted $78 billion in savings by speeding the computer exchange of patient information between health care providers.
A bill to encourage development of health information technology cleared the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in July.
Proponents of electronic medical records and computerized drug prescriptions believe such systems promise great savings but some warn the technology will be difficult to implement and is unlikely to yield huge benefits any time soon.
Harvard Medical School health policy experts, in a commentary on the RAND study, said steady but slow progress had been made in medical computing over the past three decades.
“But computers don’t offer the panaceas that politicians hope for and computer firms are peddling,” said Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard University and former head of clinical computing at Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts.
The RAND report predicted improved efficiencies of $77 billion annually and an additional $4 billion from improved safety, primarily through reduced prescription errors.
RAND said funding for the study was provided by companies with an interest in health information technology including Cerner Corp., General Electric Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., Johnson & Johnson, and Xerox.
The RAND study assumed an average investment of $7.7 billion per year over a 15-year period resulting in 90 percent of doctors and hospitals “successfully adopting” the technology and using it “effectively” to achieve the forecast savings.
Currently 20 to 25 percent of hospitals and 15 to 20 percent of physicians’ offices have adopted computerized records but are “generally limited” in their ability to share information, according to the RAND researchers.
They recommended that the federal government accelerate efforts to set universal technology standards to foster adoption and to consider financial incentives for institutions embracing the technology, according to RAND researchers.
“It is time the government and others who pay for health care to aggressively promote health information technology,” said Richard Hillestad, the RAND senior management scientist who led the two-year study.
But Dr. Himmelstein of Harvard sees the complexity of the challenge as a major obstacle.
“To mount a national program to do in every hospital that which has yet to be done in any hospital ... risks failure on a colossal scale,” he said.
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