Pernicious Low Tech Issues In Healthcare

Coach is Right ^ | 6/5/15 | Michael D. Shaw

[Oldpuppymax]

A wildly disproportionate amount of what is proposed for healthcare reform involves technical matters. Ten years ago, the pundits assured us that the forced adoption of electronic health records would save billions and revolutionize health care. Unfortunately, EHRs have cost billions, are almost universally despised by providers, and are responsible for thousands of errors—some of which have proved to be fatal.

The situation is bad enough that even the clueless Feds have decided to back off on some of their more onerous EHR requirements, at least temporarily.

Other voices have suggested that the answer lies in drug discovery, massively expanded; high tech systems to measure outcomes; or fancier approaches to public health education.

Perhaps it’s time to consider a few low tech matters, which date back to the dawn of civilization itself. Big Pharma deserves kudos for a host of miracle drugs, and the industry has surely been well rewarded. But how much is enough? Greed would lead to huge damage awards, paid out for such disasters as Vioxx—the risks of which were no secret to manufacturer Merck years before the drug was taken off the market.

Another celebrated case features greed, of course, but throws fraud, corruption, and additional players into the mix, as well. Decades ago, the diabetes industry became frustrated with the relatively small number of true type 1 diabetics—meaning those individuals who need exogenous insulin to survive, due to autoimmune pancreatic ß-cell destruction. The classic symptom of diabetes mellitus is hyperglycemia. By happy coincidence, blood glucose levels—especially these days—are exceedingly easy to measure.

For a variety of reasons, mostly linked to obesity and aging, there are also tens of millions of people who are hyperglycemic...

[Terry L Smith]

Perfect example of EHR muckups:

Our beloved Veterans Administration hospitals in Alexandria, LA., and Shreveport, LA., are NOT able to look up a veteran’s medical records, unless
one or the other transmits the file electronically to the other
facility.

Now, what year was it the government stated that the V.A.
was moving to electronic records?
I forgot.