Mark McDonald

Electronic medical records or eMedicine is the buzzword in healthcare today.  The Obama administration estimates that creating new technology alone will save billions for U.S. Citizens enabling an expansion of health coverage and a rising standard for all. 

The issues with paper-based records are well known and other industries have raised productivity through replacing paper in order to reduce duplication, errors, etc.  Personally my experience has largely involved trading sheets of paper for electronic emails.  This has produced a wave for first level value, that while terrific, will certainly not be the cost/inefficiency panacea that policy makers hope for.

Recently I have had to have knee surgery, nothing dramatic some torn cartilage repair.  My primary care physician and the specialist both use electronic medical records.  So within a week or seeing my primary care doctor, I have had x-rays, and MRI, a pre-surgical consult and the surgery. 

The data generated from the tests has been transmitted across the various doctors and it is readily accessible.  This has enabled the doctors to go from the first visit to surgery in less than a week for non-critical surgery.  The speed and accuracy for the physicians are clear.

From a patient’s perspective, the current implementation of electronic medical records is automating a paper flow.  Each of the doctor’s offices have large clerical staffs each of who were asking me for different pieces of information – test results, requests for scheduling, etc.  The good news is that they are not asking for the same demographic information all the time.

So early adopters of electronic records are realizing first order benefits of automation and data integration.  Those first order benefits involve reductions in errors, cycle time and re-entering data.  Many of these benefits are based on implementing factory based manufacturing improvements.  Electronic records have smoothed medical production processes.

Realizing second order benefits; ones that will structurally reduce costs will require further evolution and the adoption of other models.  Improving how we process patients is a start, but medicine will need to evolve to other business models that go beyond processing patients.