HIPAA is not the reason EHR is not being adopted quicker. Its money. Many of the software EHRs already have built in encryption for communication(no external devices needed!) and secondly HIPAA, if you have even read the law doesnt even state what type of security you need. Yes this does cause some confusion in the adoption process, but anyone actually looking into an EHR system will find out quickly that the majority of the EHR ( and all of the major ones ) have built in protection.
Adoption right now comes down to two things:
-Providers not wanting to or unable to learn new technology.
-Providers and provider based organizations not wanting to put out the funds to enable an EHR system in their organization.
The first reason will be an issue, the second is being handled though. Some EHR systems are offering hosted services with full support for less cost than hosting it internally. The goverment is offering grants to help subsidize cost
Finally, organizations like JACHO and some goverment entities are forcing requirements that basically require an EHR to meet.
Yet again.. facts need to be straightened out before reporting on them.
Ina Fried has a great two-page piece up on EMRs over at News.Com.
I recommend it.
But I especially recommend the second part, where she has a pullquote from John Halamka (author of the blog Geekdoctor) answering the key question of why we don’t already have this stuff:
The challenges are more on the policy side than the technology side…It’s who gets to see what? When do you get to see it? What is the patient consent?
Most of these problems come out of the HIPAA law, but more of them come out of the need for that law. The law is necessary because insurers routinely use health records to raise prices or deny coverage altogether. Employers seeking to limit their own costs share this incentive to pry.
HIPAA was a band-aid around this gaping wound. Almost as soon as the law was passed an arms race began, fueled by lawyers and lobbyists, aimed at getting around the law. Many doctors opted-out of the war, taking advantage of a provision that allowed small practices to stick with paper.
Without HIPAA, and the need for HIPAA, there is no doubt more doctors would be paperless. We might have already gone through several generations of electronic systems, and ironed out many bugs that still exist.
Automation saves money and saves lives, in every industry where it is deployed. There is no reason for medicine to be 20 years behind the times, other than the political battle between privacy and market incentives.
There are two ways this can end. Either eliminate the market incentive to peek, which insurers are offering to do (so long as a “public option” doesn’t exist) or give them the data they need to do business.
We have seent the third option and it doesn’t work.
