| President Obama's speech lining up EMR and other | | | | work? |
| health care niceties (in his ambitious stimulus | | | | America's largest institutions won't have to start |
| package designed to improve a U.S. economy) is | | | | from scratch. Varying implementations of EMR |
| as precarious as any encountered since the Great | | | | are already in place at Veteran's Administration's |
| Depression sounded laudatory and necessary. "If | | | | hospitals across the country. One hurdle at the |
| we're to improve the quality of our health care | | | | VA is that electronic documents have been |
| while lowering its costs, we will have to make the | | | | predominately utilized to facilitate business |
| immediate investments necessary to ensure that | | | | outcomes, rather than patient care. What EMR |
| within five years, all of America's medical records | | | | systems need to do is provide cognitive support |
| are computerized. This will cut waste, eliminate | | | | to medical practitioners, in the manner that certain |
| red tape, and reduce the need to repeat | | | | EMR systems already do in hundreds of private |
| expensive medical tests. But it just won't save | | | | medical practices nationwide. If a computerized |
| billions of dollars and thousands of jobs - it will | | | | medical records system is too cumbersome and |
| save lives by reducing the deadly, but | | | | too rigid, it might not be much of an |
| preventable, medical errors that pervade our | | | | improvement; but, if an EMR system is |
| health care system." | | | | user-friendly, and is flexible, it would be a huge |
| In an ideal world, the President would be justly | | | | step in a positive direction. If a Federal EMR |
| optimistic, but Obama's goal is hardly a new one. | | | | standardized system would only follow the lead of |
| In fact, President George W. Bush, Obama's | | | | certain packages of state-of-the-art EMR |
| unpopular predecessor, set a similar time period in | | | | software already available in the private sector, |
| announcing his EMR initiative buttressed on a | | | | President Obama's ambitious goals are more likely |
| series of regional programs. The Bush initiative, like | | | | to be realized. |
| many Bush initiatives, failed. But can Universal EMR | | | | |