Health IT Hits the Big Leagues

The year 2010 was, for Major League Baseball, the year of the pitcher. Clinching that characterization was Roy Halladay, a right-hander with the Philadelphia Phillies, who followed up a perfect game during the regular season with a no-hitter in the playoffs, the second in Major League Baseball history. Off the field, however, 2010 was the year that baseball embraced electronic medical records.

The sport's adoption of health IT is a microcosm and a leading indicator of the country's effort to make electronic records ubiquitous. In both cases, the impetus for change is better, more efficient health care. Despite Major League Baseball's adeptness at collecting, sharing and disseminating the most arcane game statistics going back more than a century, the league's system of medical information until recently resembled that of most health care providers: scattered file cabinets of paper records that inhibited care and slowed the exchange of data among doctors.

Baseball began implementation of its new electronic records system earlier this year, before the season began. Its challenges were the same as those of other organizations: entering existing paper records into the system, ensuring security and privacy, reliable data exchange and concerns that information in electronic files could jeopardize employability.

The difference is that in professional baseball, the MRI of an elbow can be a window into the particulars of a $100-million throwing arm. (See Strasburg, Stephen.)

Throughout the season, Major League Baseball has put in place and refined an integrated, Web-based records system "that eventually will provide an encyclopedia of knowledge on every professional player," from Single A hopefuls to established stars, the league said in a statement. The system will track the health of Major League umpires, as well.

As with the multi-billion dollar rollout happening across the country, baseball's health IT initiative is a major undertaking and a work in progress.

"This year is almost a test year, and it's going to need to be upgraded based on feedback," said Dan Halem, senior vice president for labor relation for Major League Baseball, earlier this year.

Mirroring the security concerns that have alarmed healthcare privacy activists in the non-baseball health sector, some players have suggested that electronic records could reveal medical information that will shorten their careers, according to reports. Some of those players have threatened to withhold medical complaints or seek care from their own doctors. In the general population, fear of medical disclosure and subsequent repercussions result in some patients withholding information from doctors or depriving themselves of care, studies show.

Major League Baseball has taken steps to allay those concerns. In the last days of the 2010 regular season, it divulged changes to the league's free-agency process, including "improved procedures for the transmittal of free agents' medical records."