Patient health records
One of the most important improvements that can come with a national health care plan is the gathering of patient health records in a cohesive database. A local step in that direction came recently with a grant from the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services to University of Missouri Health Care.
The grant was one of 81 nationally, the second round of Health Care Innovation Awards made under the Affordable Care Act.
The Missouri grant will use integrated digital health records to improve care and reduce costs for some 10,000 Medicare and Medicaid patients. MU Health Vice Chancellor Hal Williamson says the program could provide “a model for the nation.”
Counterproductive worries about patient privacy and the persistence of a disjointed health care system have kept us from realizing the advantages of integrated health records now possible and long overdue in a digital age.
Every citizen in any developed nation becomes a health care patient rather early in life. From that moment, other national health care systems take great advantage of integrated patient records.
In France, every citizen carries a digital record the size of a credit card containing his or her complete medical history. At the doctor’s office, scanning the card provides the caregiver full information. At the end of the visit, the doctor enters upgraded information that becomes part of the permanent record, kept centrally as well as on patients’ cards.
In this country, we try for good records with awkward questions asked by the doctor or an assistant and answers written in longhand. At the end of the visit, another paper file entry is needed. The validity of the information provided depends on this exchange, potentially full of human error perhaps at a time of stress. No other provider has automatic access to these records.
In France and other nations with good centralized medical records, doctors’ offices are not laden with thousands of paper files to build and maintain, and the quality of the information doctors have about patients is obviously superior.
Doctors’ record- keeping and compliance hassles can be dramatically reduced with a national Medicare- style health care plan. Not only is this a boon for caregivers; it allows better care for patients at lower cost. The new grant for MU Health is a step in this direction.
As we continue to realize the benefits possible with a national health care plan, we will want to continue the evolution as quickly as possible. Fear- mongering about “socialism” is foolish. The best way to enhance public health is more access to care. Currently the best access is provided with programs such as Medicare and Veterans Affairs health. The best way to improve health care is by expanding the Medicare concept to everyone and continuing to improve it with such innovations as the development of centralized health records. Aug. 5 Lexington Herald- Leader, Lexington, Ky.