ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS!?!?
"Invasion of privacy is an issue that really gets under State Rep. Babette Josephs’ skin. That’s why the Philadelphia Democrat introduced a bill, passed unanimously last week by the House, that would ban the forced implantation of computer chips in humans. Conjuring Orwellian images, Josephs worries the identification devices – the size of a grain of rice – could lead to a real-life Big Brother nightmare. “I’m doing, I think, what the legislature does too little of,” she said. “This is a problem on the horizon, and I want to address it before it becomes a societal disgrace.” Though the technology hasn’t debuted in Pennsylvania, VeriChip, a company in Florida, received federal Food and Drug Administration clearance in 2004 to market the implanted microchips, which were tested on 200 Alzheimer’s patients. Injected into the triceps, the chips have unique 16-digit codes and GPS capabilities that allow nursing homes to find wandering patients."
What are some benefits of an electronic medical record system?
In reality, an EMR is NOT faster (its quite a bit slower) and as of now, CAN NOT be shared between areas; so the first answerer is more of a fantasy right now. The BIG advantages right now as computerized coding-it applies the CPT and ICD-9 codes automatically. Another is that it forces you to over chart and thus not leave much out which is good in law suits and for billing. They are much harder to pull up than just opening a paper chart. They are also hard to find specific info (like a med on a certain day). Unfortunately they are mandated. You can also print copies easier than having to zerox a paper chart. The first answer is in a utopian world-we are just not there yet.
Which country is the leader for electronic health record systems?
The United States has a relatively low rate of electronic health record adoption among physicians as compared with other developed nations, according to a Bloomberg News report.According to the report, the top 10 countries with the highest EHR adoption rates are:Norway (98 percent)Netherlands (98 percent)United Kingdom (97 percent)New Zealand (97 percent)Australia (92 percent)Germany (82 percent)United States (69 percent)France (67 percent)Canada (56 percent)Switzerland (41 percent)
I want my US electronic health records (EHRs) but can think of only one recent provider whom I might ask for access. Will I only get the data from that provider or is interoperability a thing already and via that provider I might get everything?
Since HIPAA privacy rules also apply to sharing data with other providers it is unlikely they will have all your records. A big roadblock for interoperability isn’t just the technical challenge but these privacy standards as well.If your looking for records on your medications, or lab results you can get these directly from Labcorp/Quest or your pharmacy (CVS/Walmart, etc) by verifying your identity.I wrote about this and more in these guides on accessing and storing your electronic medical records in a central location:Where Can I Get My Medical Records OnlineHow To Check Lab Results OnlineIn some cases one provider might have a pretty good CCD or Continuity of Care Document which will go back to your history of records that might exist in other places but it’s a long shot to get the complete history.The best bet is to just prepare for the future and use a central storage location to aggregate your medical records as you go such as the one found here:Medidex
Was the healthcare system better and cheaper before Obamacare or is it better and cheaper since Obamacare was enacted.?
The question has to be answered in context. Healthcare costs literally doubled between 2001 and 2009, when healthcare reached about 20% of the US economy. Doubling again in the next 8 years would have been catastrophic.Obamacare also prohibited the selling of fraudulent cheaper policies. For example, popular before Obamacare were “short term” policies, which made money hand over fist by denying people coverage when they needed it most. For example, if your policy runs out on 12/31 and you discover you have cancer on 12/1, then you literally have just 1 month to treat your cancer until your policy expires and you have to carry the full expense of treating your cancer yourself. It is probably safe to say that this outcome is not why purchasers of these policies were buying insurance. Obviously if you switch from “liar insurance” to actual insurance the price has to go up.Since Obamacare was implemented, health insurance costs have gone up at the slowest rate in a generation. Unfortunately premiums and copays have gone up far faster than overall costs due to a one-time imbalance related to the new cost structure. This was made worse by about 20 states refusing Medicaid expansion.In a literal sense, Obamacare is more expensive than what existed before, but it is far superior to the trendline we were on before the rule change. The proper approach at this point is to accept that it has problems and fix them. Remember that some of these problems, like the refusal of medicaid expansion, were created as poison pills, specifically to harm the program in hopes of reversing it. Now is not the time to give up on creating the kind of health care system other first world countries take for granted.
What are disadvantages to a single-payer system healthcare insurance?
Whatever the disadvantages may be, all we have to do is look at what those countries with single-payer systems actually spend on medicine and compare it to what we spend--then compare outcomes. When this is done, our system doesn't match up very well. In those other countries, doctors don't kmake as much as doctors do in the US, but they still make an excellent living. The lawyers are far less involved in medicine in those countries than they are here. We should be so lucky... Canada and France have single-payer systems that they would neverf consider trading for our for-profit fiasco. Germany and Japan have universal private coverage, though the insurers' profit margins are tightly regulated. Nobody in any of those four countries ever goes bankrupt over medical bills. In the US, thousands file for bankruptcy protection every year because of astronomical medical bills--often people who actually had insurance when they got sick. I'm sorry to be unable to offer any more convincing disadvantages than the somewhat-less-wealthy doctors and lawyers. Most of the population would surely benefit from a single-payer arrangement, qand it would absolutely help our businesses become more competitive if they didn't have to shell out the bucks for what the government provides everywhere else. We need a fundamental change, and soon.