The myth behind electronic medical records

(By Anthony Miller – Friday, 20th March 2009 9:15am). Equally scary commentary (but for quite different reasons) from Panmure’s George O’Connor this morning about the potential efficacy of electronic medical records (EMR) systems. George refers to recent opinion pieces in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal which dismiss Barack Obama’s increased funding for EMR as potentially "harmful" and offering "no real benefit." If I may requote Drs. Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband, "there are no compelling data to demonstrate that such voluminous documentation translates into better outcomes for their sick patients."

We have written many times around this topic, both in the context of the UK NHS National Programme for IT, and about the prospects for our two largest software companies that play precisely in this market; Misys (now through Allscripts) and Sage (via its Emdeon acquisition). Both see EMR as a key growth driver on the back of Obama’s funding initiative. Frankly, my problem is less to do with the benefits and more to do with the costs. I am glad that when I visit my local GP practice it doesn’t matter which GP I see, he/she can call up my medical records right then and there (though I’m just not at all happy that my records should be ‘freely’ accessible by anyone else.). I don’t know how much it cost them to implement this system but I am pretty sure they haven’t keyed in the many, many years of handwritten scrawl from my (late) GP when I was growing up. In fact, I’m not even sure they have these records at all, now I come to think about it!

I’m sure that the few thousand dollars that US physicians can claim as a grant to implement an EMR system will be welcome. But I suspect this would only cover the technology procurement and software implementation. However, the ‘value’, as ever, is in the data. Surely the cost of transcribing the mountain of paper medical records into the EMR systems will turn out to be, if not a show-stopper, at least a limitation on how quickly the full benefits of the EMR system – whatever they may be’ – can be realised.