Med Mal News

The Rand Corporation, the health policy research company, disclosed on Jan. 7 that research indicates the anticipated cost-savings associated with the implementation of electronic medical record-keeping have not materialized. Rand's 2005 projections of huge cost-savings, better efficiency and improved patient care have not come to pass, according to Rand's researchers, not because the ideas behind the push for electronic record-keeping were flawed, but because the information technology systems now being used are not optimal. Rand suggests that: 1) Electronic health records be made more universally accessible to medical providers, even those in other health care systems than the ones storing the records; 2) Patients be able to access their own records (similar to how they access their bank account information) and be able to share them with different providers; and 3) Record-keeping systems be made more user-friendly, so that health care providers can use them with little training.

The 2005 study, which predicted that electronic record-keeping could bring annual savings of $81 million to the United States, caused some skepticism at the time because it was paid for by companies that stood to profit from selling electronic medical record-keeping systems to doctors and hospitals. “Seven years later,” according to the Rand release announcing the researchers' most recent study results, “the evidence about the safety and efficiency of health information technology is mixed and annual health care spending has grown by $800 billion annually.”