The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as Obama’s stimulus bill, required the adoption of electronic medical records and provided $30 billion in funding pursuant to that purpose. Sounded like a good idea at the time to some people. Didn’t sound like it had anything to do with economic stimulus to me. Like much of the so-called stimulus bill, it sounded like pork.
At any rate my cardiologist moved to a new medical practice recently, and I saw him yesterday. He was using two computers as he spoke to me. A laptop to access records which are in his new practice, and his tablet computer to access those from when he was seeing me in his former practice.
The two medical groups in question are located in the same building and admit patients to the same hospital, and yet the two electronic records systems do not speak to each other, and there is no provision for transferring data from one to the other.
I have no idea how this relates to the Obama stimulus program, but…
Kinda defeats the purpose of ELECTRONIC records, huh? I guess our commander -in-chief is not a techie in chief. (Yes, I know CiC is a military title & function, not a civilian one).
ReplyDeleteI thought that maybe the Dr changed practices, but the old one still has your records and has not moved/copied them yet. But still, that should be painless and quick, so... Still mind boggling.