US Government Grants $1.2B for Electronic Health Records

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
4,646
Your tax dollars at work: the US government has announced grants of almost $1.2 billion to help with the implementation and use of electronic health records. I hope security is a big part of this. Imagine the drama that would come from a “we’ve been hacked” announcement at a healthcare provider.

The grants include $598 million to set up some 70 health information technology centers to help healthcare institutions acquire electronic health record systems and $564 million to develop a nationwide system of health information networks, Vice President Joe Biden's office said in a statement.
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i suggested to get on this at my work.. no response yet i guess.

we do tech support for nursing homes, most of our clients are already all paperless except for smaller functions of thier work.

this was suppose to be 19 billion, not less than 2 billion. i wonder how much drugs they bought with the other 17 bil
 
I am an IT worker at a major hospital company, and we are working hard to implement electronic health records. There is already so much patient data that is electronically stored, but there is still quite a bit left.

Eventually, you should be able to go to any doctor's office or hospital and have your data accessible to them. But that still is years away, and will require some kind of standards throughout the industry. Right now, we just want to be able to have patient data accessible by any hospital in the system and the doctors associated with that system.

Security is a very high priority with patient data. It is pretty rare to hear about patient medical records hacked.
 
Security is a non issue. My father's company is the worlds largest archive of digital medical images and they have never had a security breach in the over a decade they've been archiving images, and about 10-20 people try each month, usually from China believe it or not.
 
It's not central repositories that would concern me, they are going to be well protected, its that once in digital form it becomes much easier to make copies and distribute.
 
You simple can't believe how old many hospital systems are... they have system 20, 30 years old... paper work. Even worst, so many "system" and functions that don't talk to each other... and programmed by who knows. But since they are running, they keep running and patching them.

No manual or doc on what they are doing.

and the number of forms, each insurance (even medicare...) ask for to submit are so different.... and so many traps inside...
 
heatlesssun said:
It's not central repositories that would concern me, they are going to be well protected, its that once in digital form it becomes much easier to make copies and distribute.
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Not to mention the social engineering that can happen. I'm probably just a worry-wart.

I do appreciate the conversion though. We had to get the records of my kids from CA and after verifying my identity (the company did a fairly strenuous validation), I got all of the nicely scanned records in the mail. I'm sure they were legible to our new doctors here but the handwriting was total chicken scratch for the most part.
 
I'm in the middle of a EMR implementation right now, wonder if my client can get a couple grand from this
 
Hmmm... So government-sponsored and provided central deposits of your medical records and history.

Yep, nothing I can see wrong with that...
 
An interesting tidbit - did you know that your social security number was embedded into a lot of older medical images?
 
The problem is not how all of those records are stored.
The problem of this health care cost big jump are among the different holes in the insurance business.
A physicians will be happy to get 60% what they billed going thro all the loops.
That's why many of our client don't even brother to bill those standing accounts that worth more that $50 because add all the admin cost... its not worth it...
And you can see why Doctor charge you more and more.
 
So theyve decided not to go with a centralized database? Yes, no? I miss it?
 
There is not going to be a centralized big-brother government database where they have all your health information. That is just FUD, the government doesn't want to know about your health status (conspiracy theeorist, that's your cue).

Security is not a major issue for large healthcare providers who should have IT staff capable of handling it; the issue is the smaller doctors offices (2 docs, a couple nurses) who implement EHR software and can't afford proper security lockdowns.

The major issue I see is a lack of industry-wide standards. Just because you have EHR software does not mean you can just easily import that dataset with another EHR software to have a complete health history.

Different groups have be trying to get a standard for years with little success because everyone has their own way of doing things that they believe to be the one and only way.

Also, when talking about affordability it doesn't help that medical costs are outrageous. You know it's bad when the surgeon who operated on our infant daughter told us that after the surgery she would need two doses of infant Tylenol for pain management - he told us that we could either go out and buy a whole bottle for $7.99 at Target or the surgery center could give her a single dose and it would cost us/insurance over $60. WTF

Just for background, I have worked in healthcare IT for some time and just recently worked on an EHR software implementation at a medium size med center so I have seen the process inside and out. The transition is never pretty.

EHR is feasible if concrete standards that software engineers could build EHR software around actually exists.

Oh also, one reason for high prescription drug costs beyond the high initial R&D price is when the drug reps have to put on a sales pitch for healthcare providers which usually take the form of lavish catered meals for doctors and nurses (which are quite delicious I might add :) ) while they hope to sway doctors to prescribe their drugs by providing free post-it notes and travel mugs. These are more frequent then you might imagine. One month there were 20 "in-service lunches" out of 30 days in the month.
 
lsman said:
The problem is not how all of those records are stored.
The problem of this health care cost big jump are among the different holes in the insurance business.
A physicians will be happy to get 60% what they billed going thro all the loops.
That's why many of our client don't even brother to bill those standing accounts that worth more that $50 because add all the admin cost... its not worth it...
And you can see why Doctor charge you more and more.
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To be fair, lawyers are to blame for it more than anything. A general practice doctor (much less a specialist) can easily fork over $50,000 a year just on malpractice insurance.

I'm not saying all lawsuits are bad (A doctor that mis-diagnoses cancer 3 times in a row obviously needs to get his ass sued), but the frivolity of the majority of them is what can contribute to everything.

brshoemak said:
That is just FUD, the government doesn't want to know about your health status
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Apparently you haven't read the new health bill.
Do they care now? Not really. Do they WANT to know? Yes.
 
A while back my doctor had me monitor my blood sugar because I had a blood test where it was high. He wrote me a prescription of a blood glucoses meter and supplies after three months of readings it turned out I was not a diabetic.

But a year later I start getting mailings from companies that sale supplies for diabetics, someone got to my insurance records… Now it is floating around I am a diabetic when I am not for maybe potential employers to see.

Don’t tell me there is no danger here. Sell the sunshine to someone else, if humans are involved there will be failures to protect information, ask any of the political candidates from last years election that had their passport information leaked from supposed secure Government databases where there are pleny of standards.
 
Max Mike said:
A while back my doctor had me monitor my blood sugar because I had a blood test where it was high. He wrote me a prescription of a blood glucoses meter and supplies after three months of readings it turned out I was not a diabetic.

But a year later I start getting mailings from companies that sale supplies for diabetics, someone got to my insurance records… Now it is floating around I am a diabetic when I am not for maybe potential employers to see.

Don’t tell me there is no danger here. Sell the sunshine to someone else, if humans are involved there will be failures to protect information, ask any of the political candidates from last years election that had their passport information leaked from supposed secure Government databases where there are pleny of standards.
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So your private insurance company sells, loses, or leaks your personal information, and it's the government that you're worried about? Why is it that everyone thinks the insurers are good and the government is bad? I've never heard of the government denying care to increase profits.
 
These jobs are the most likely ones to be more stable right now ;). Medical stuff is still doing pretty good.
 
Makes me think of that movie, "The Net", or whatever it was.

We should still have some kind of paper records as a backup.
 
mcswtj.jpg


What could go wrong?

We need the feds taking over healthcare like we need a hole in the head.
 
Conker said:
These jobs are the most likely ones to be more stable right now ;). Medical stuff is still doing pretty good.
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I beg to differ- Here in CT they have cut Medicare/Medicade payments to healthcare facilites in half.

Were looking at massive layoffs because the profit margin is crap as it is (if we are down 4 beds were losing money)
 
Karma said:
So your private insurance company sells, loses, or leaks your personal information, and it's the government that you're worried about? Why is it that everyone thinks the insurers are good and the government is bad? I've never heard of the government denying care to increase profits.
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Government takes the benchmark of what private enterprise is doing, and adds 100% screw-up rate to it. It's an unspoken law of nature.
 
Any time someone wants to explain to me what the value-adds are to Private health insurance, I'm all ears.

What PRECISELY does the corporation bring to me as a consumer that justifies my paying them $3000 per year in pure profit for "handling" my account?

I'm just doing a good consumer's job, in the "free market" to determine the value of the private insurance companies product, today, right now. Talk to me Turkish.
 
gdonovan said:
mcswtj.jpg


What could go wrong?

We need the feds taking over healthcare like we need a hole in the head.
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Offtopic: The whole country is broke. about -$11.6 trillion and it's only going to get worse with big government democrats, and big government republicans running the show.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/deficit.jpg

Anyways, I sure hope they actually complete this; if my software project management class is any indication these types of projects tend to not be completed.
 
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
Any time someone wants to explain to me what the value-adds are to Private health insurance, I'm all ears.

What PRECISELY does the corporation bring to me as a consumer that justifies my paying them $3000 per year in pure profit for "handling" my account?

I'm just doing a good consumer's job, in the "free market" to determine the value of the private insurance companies product, today, right now. Talk to me Turkish.
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It's not like your $3000/year is going to go away. It'll just be brought on by increases in taxes (Oh shoot, but the health care bill says not to consider it a tax!).

I can think of more downsides to public health care than what it is now privately.

Here's the deal. 85% of Americans have health care. For those 85% of Americans, the public health care is a bad thing. Make no mistake- Obama is not looking out for "America", he's looking out for the lowest common denominator: the 15% that don't.

That's perfectly fine, except when it adversely affects the other 85% of Americans.

archevilangel said:
Offtopic: The whole country is broke. about -$11.6 trillion and it's only going to get worse with big government democrats, and big government republicans running the show.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/deficit.jpg
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Most folks just hear of the deficit. $1 Trillion dollars: well, we can just raise taxes and get that $1,000/person taken care of, right???
What people don't realize is that deficit is the number that we OVERSPEND each YEAR.
Note: Deficit must be ZERO for us to break even. Deficit must be NEGATIVE for us to begin paying down that $12 Trillion in debt.

That's what people don't look at. They see the deficit number on TV and don't see why it's bad. Bush's "record" $482 Billion deficit looks like chump change. Obama increasing our deficit by 300% is not helping squat. Obama vowing to cut the deficit isn't a solution at all. We need legislation immediately to cap ALL spending. Flat out: you can't spend more than you intake. Period.
 
Most of us know what needs to be done, figuring it out isn't the problem. Figuring out how to actually get it done is the problem.
 
As a second year medical student, I have access to all of the patient information from two hospitals from home with just a username and password. Someone who is really determined could almost certainly acquire my one of my colleague's passwords electronically or just through the use of a physical keylogger. Now imagine if I had access EVERYONE's health records....
 
Emission said:
Most of us know what needs to be done, figuring it out isn't the problem. Figuring out how to actually get it done is the problem.
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So explain to us what the problem is?

The problem I see is that lawyers are running things.

The other problem being that the government is the one restricting what insurance companies can and cannot do driving up costs.

I don't want the clowns in office (dem or repub) to get to dick around any further, if it was up to me I'd fire them all and start from scratch with term limits in place damnit.
 
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