Name: Broken Records: How We Got Here
Uploaded: 2019-03-15
Duration: 5 min 42 s
Description: When the American healthcare system began to transition to Electronic Healthcare Records, policy makers saw a future full of potential and possibility.

The story of the interoperable electronic health record starts in 1998. By computerizing health records, we can avoid dangerous medical mistakes, reduce costs. We wil make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America's medical records are computerized. Further the use of technology in improving our Health care system. Electronic medical records just make sense. [ MUSIC ] In the midst of the great recession, there was a giant opportunity to spend money in America to help us get out of that recession called the American Reinvestment and REcovery Act. And in that Act, With an opportunity for healthcare to have a section which offers doctors incentives to buy and then use our healthcare records. Obma represented a new way of thinking on a lot of fronts, and one of them was technology. This was something that he saw as long overdue that every other industry was computerized. And it was so outrageus and stupid that That we have all these paper files sitting in file cabinets that are doing nobody any good. So what Obama did is he decided to put money behind it. The economic recovery plan I'm propsing will help modernize our health care system and that won't save jobs, it will save lives. We will make sure that every doctors office and hospital in this country is using cutting edge technology. And electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year. And so in 2009, the federal government, Congress, passed what was called the HITECH Act. It stands for the Health Information Technology For Economic and Clinical Health Act. The goal of HITECH was by 2015, every single perswon in America will have a electronic health medical record that will be transferable. So the goal is to improve patient safety. And to create a system of easily accessible information that can be As useful as possible for providers to make safe and informed healthcare decisions for their patients. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] I'm pleased and excited to say that the registration process is now open for health care providers to obtain significant incentive payments for adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records. Is part of the process of promoting electronic health records a certification program with setup. And, that certification and program provided essentially rules by which technology needed to be developed in order for it to be tied to reimbursement payments by the federal government. For doctors to get the federal payments for adopting electronic health records, they had to prove that they were using the electronic health records. In a meaningful way. If they bought a [ UNKNOWN ] health record and year one, showed that they used. In year two, used it to more effectively affect patient outcomes, and then in year three, to really be a more effective doctor. > To receive incentive payments, physicians and hospitals had to buy systems certified to federal government specifications Providers assumed the certified systems would be high quality and meet program requirements. Well, we certainly thought when you provide $ 44 billion in incentive for people to buy software products that the industry's gonna grow a lot, and not suprisingly there was a lot of growth in the industry after the HITECH Act was enacted. The requirements that were there in terms of meaningful use The time frames that were there, a lot of things got built that were built to check the box of meeting that and getting it out the door in time, so people would be certified to meet that. And so when things like that happen, when you rush, unintended consequences can be one of the downstream effect of causing someone to do that. So there was software that didn't work the way that the company said it did. They had taken shortcuts in order to meet government requirements, and so there were actual software defects. There was tons of requirements and regulation, but I think the critics might say that they weren't the right Regulations. I think that they needed to make sure that the products were in fact safe and they needed to rapidly, in the view of critics, rapidly investigate any failures to make these systems better. Poor EHR design and poor implementations of the systems have really led to some horrible Cases of suffering, injury or death. [ MUSIC ] The hope was that the program would improve care, coordination and reduce costs. The evidence suggests these goals haven't been reached. A medical economic survey last year found nearly 70 % of physicians say their Electronic health record systems have not been worth it. One physician wrote we used to see 32 patients a day with one tech and now we struggle to see 24 patients a day with four techs. And we provide worst case. But nobody could dispute that putting all that money out there did in fact get people to install this equipment. But it wasn't just about installing computers in doctor's office it was about all these other things like having interact ability, having ability to forge vast amount of data to find new treatment is. Disease. So there were all these other things and those are the things that really haven't been accomplished. [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Broken Records: How We Got Here

Health

When the American healthcare system began to transition to Electronic Healthcare Records, policy makers saw a future full of potential and possibility.