Over the last few years, electronic medical records (EMRs) have become a hot topic, even addressed in the controversial “Obamacare” health care bill. There are many ways that EMRs can elevate patient care. Imagine you are on a business trip in another state or even another country. Now imagine you are injured or unconscious, perhaps you were in a car accident, as long as you have your ID on you, the hospital can find out any special conditions you might have, right? Maybe not and this is not something that should be taken for granted. What if you doctor or loved ones are not available right away? It is those crucial minutes that can be the difference between life and death. With standardized electronic medical records, any hospital would be able to access your full medical history and get potentially life-saving information.
While the idea of EMRs is good, the implementation has proved to be an extremely difficult proposition. There are several hurdles that must be overcome to make standard EMRs a reality. One of the greatest challenges is where will this mind boggling amount of data be stored and who will have access to it? Any central repository of information would take immense data storage capabilities, of a scale that only companies like Google, Microsoft or the U.S. government would be able to support. Google and Microsoft have already thrown their hats in the ring but many people would be wary of private companies, which already have a lot of information about users, having total access to medical records as well. This leaves the government as the next logical choice to administrate this data, but is it really any more comforting to know the government bureaucracy has this information? The reality is that this data would probably be safer and less accessible by a private firm.
Another big obstacle is how will all of these records be formatted? It is difficult enough to view a simple MS Word document on a Mac, getting all of these records uploaded in a universal format is a huge logistical challenge. Not to mention that every hospital and doctor’s office in the country already have rooms full of paper documentation that would need to be entered into a database. This can only be done manually and who will foot the bill for the hundreds or thousands of man hours it would take to enter this data? Most likely the burden will be on the doctor, although they may be eligible for reimbursement from the federal government. So much of the burden will actually lie with the taxpayer.