My wife spent more than 20 years working in the medical industry.  She and I would often discuss the ways to improve the costs associated with health care in this country.  It is staggering to see (and hear) about how much money is wasted simply by the amount of paperwork that goes in to obtaining medical treatment.  We have all been asked when going to a new doctor to come in 20 minutes early just to fill out forms..... and everyone asks for the same information.

This podcast from CIO Magazine is a great 20 minutes on the making the business case for why Electronic Health Records, or EHRs, not only make a lot of sense, but will be the way of the future. 

Some of the points made in the podcast include the potential to save $81B a year in medical costs in this country.  Included in that savings is $1B just in mitigating the 200,000 mistakes made in patient prescriptions.  Another example is when a doctor had to find all of his patients that were on Vioxx during the recall.  It took only a few minutes.  A third is a realization that 30-40% of patient records often can not be found when required.

It is estimated that only about 15% of all doctors use EHRs today.  But with national, state and local incentives like pay for performance as well as proven ROI/TCO savings, it is anticipated that more than 50% will be on board by 2009 and almost 100% within 10 years.  The savings accrue from better insurance codings, reimbursement processing, transcription costs no longer required, increased efficiencies and lower staff requirements to name a few

No system is perfect, and EHR implementations do fail - mostly due to lack of training and recognizing that it takes time to make a transition to EHRs.  However, the writing appears to be on the wall, and those of you who deal with the medical industry might be well served to understand not only the implications of HIPAA, but also where EHRs appear to be heading.  It definitely seems like we are now at a tipping point.