Eliminating old paper files

Monday, July 13, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

America’s health care system can do a terrific job of diagnosing ailments by using state-of-the-art medical equipment. Many surgical procedures unheard of a decade ago are routine today because of advances in computers, laser technology and robotics.

Why, then, do physicians and hospitals do such a lousy job of keeping records on their patients? Why do their paper-stuffed filing cabinets remind one of bureaucratic incompetence, the type one reads about in a Franz Kafka novel?

President Barack Obama and Congress recognized the need to switch from paper to electronic records by including $19 billion in the economic stimulus package to help with the conversion. Doctors and hospitals that accept Medicare and Medicaid will be eligible for the grants, but providers who fail to switch over by 2015 stand to lose some of the federal reimbursement they receive for those patients.

What is troubling is that only 1.5 percent of the nation’s 6,000 hospitals have comprehensive electronic records, the Associated Press reported last week.

Our preference would be for the medical community to begin the conversions as soon as possible to make the delivery of health care more timely and efficient. As a result, medical errors are likely to be reduced.

Problems that crop up should be worked out as conversions occur.

One is that medical professionals will need to be trained to retrieve and analyze electronic records. Not everyone who works in a hospital or doctor’s office is skilled in the use of computers.

It would be beneficial to patients if the records kept by their physicians can also be accessed at area hospitals where they are likely to be treated. For instance, if a patient is admitted to an emergency room, it could prove helpful to the physicians to have immediate access to the individual’s personal medical history on blood type, allergies and surgeries.

Just as important is to make sure that electronic records are tamper-proof to protect the patient’s privacy and the accuracy of the information provided.

If all these steps are taken, the improvement in medicine could be so dramatic that people will wonder why it took so long for a health care system that relies on high-tech equipment to modernize its records.