Welcome to EMR and HIPAA

There was a pretty good article recently in the NY Sun Times about plans to push EMR by government. While it still gave no specific plans here’s an excerpt of a few possible things:

“Dr. Brailer told the Sun that later this month the administration will start by unveiling “breakthrough” health information technology initiatives that may be completed by year’s end, increasing the issue’s visibility among the American public. The initiatives include nationwide computerized personal medication histories, so that a doctor anywhere in the country can know what medications a patient is taking before treating him; providing “secure messaging” to allow for private e-mail and other electronic correspondence directly between doctors and patients, and “bio surveillance,” which uses computerized records to monitor disease outbreaks and provide earlier detection and better treatment of pandemics or bioterrorism attacks.”

I thought the article was good because it gave some interesting statistics about EMR and tried to quantify cost savings and expenses. The above “breakthrough” technologies it said would only cost $100 million to $200 million dollars. I guess the reality is that the technologies cost much less, but it might take $100-200 million dollars to cut through the red tape.