More Study Needed for E-Health System

There was an interesting story a few days ago by Nextgov reporter Jill R. Aitoro on the Health and Human Services Department's plans to determine the value doctors derived from electronic records by distributing questionnaires and conducting focus groups in Colorado. The purpose is to gather clinicians' feedback on a soon-to-be-launched online portal that will allow Colorado health care providers to find and organize patients' medical histories from multiple sources.

As Jill notes in her story, there is some concern with exactly what the study will end up proving. She quotes John Glaser, vice president and chief information officer of Partners Healthcare in Boston, who has plenty of experience in this area: "I think it is really hard to get great data that would 'prove' that these kinds of exchanges can reduce costs, decrease errors, etc. There are so many intervening and confounding variables that it is hard to provide the value of an exchange."

I agree, and yet this assessment still needs to proceed (as I think John Glaser believes as well). However, I would like to see in addition to the planned study a broader one focused on how medical costs and especially medical errors could be reduced if better non-automated practices were followed in Colorado health care settings, e.g. doctors washing their hands, following policies and procedures to prevent medical never events, better wound surveillance to reduce the likelihood of MRSA, etc. Then there would be the beginnings of a better baseline to investigate how much (or whether) electronic health record systems are cost effective and can prevent as many medical problems as is often claimed.