[Med-privacy] EMRs

[peter marshall]

ADVOCATES: GOV'T NEEDS TO PUSH HARDER FOR E-HEALTH
[SOURCE: InfoWorld, AUTHOR: Grant Gross]

The U.S. government needs to step up its push for electronic health  
records because they are not being adopted quickly enough, a group of  
health advocates said Friday. U.S. healthcare providers continue to  
make errors that hurt tens of thousands of patients each year, and  
e-health records could prevent many of those problems, said Dr. Alan  
Lotvin, senior vice president of oncology for Magellan Health Services  
Inc. The U.S. healthcare system is failing patients "despite the fact  
we have the knowledge and the technology to really do a much, much  
better job." About 3.5 percent of all U.S. hospital stays have a drug  
error associated with them, leading to more than 100,000 significant  
medical problems and nearly 30,000 deaths each year, said Lotvin,  
speaking at an e-health forum sponsored by the Information Technology  
and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Health IT Now Coalition. U.S.  
residents should have a "sense of outrage" when confronted with these  
prescription errors, which would largely be prevented with e-health  
records, Lotvin said. He compared the U.S. health-care system's record  
to Amazon.com, which received 2,000 orders per minute during the 2005  
holiday shopping season.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/10/26/Government-needs-to-push- 
harder-for-e-health_1.html