Electronic Medical Records: Can They Revolutionize Health Care?

Dr. Ross Fletcher, Chief of Staff for the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, DC — conducting a short demonstration on the Department's use of EMRs.

Dr. William Stead, Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, Professor of Medicine and of Biomedical Informatics, Assistant to the Chancellor for Informatics and Chief Information Architect for Vanderbilt University — Dr. Stead has worked with electronic medical records for over thirty years.

Peter Swire, Professor of Law at the Ohio State University and former Chief Counselor for Privacy under the Clinton Administration — discussing privacy concerns associated with the widespread deployment of EMRs.

Dr. Paul Ellwood, President of the Jackson Hole Group — discussing the group's recent proposal called Heroic Pathways, which would use information technologies and electronic patient records to improve health care and reduce costs.

Roundtable Discussion and Q & A

Electronic medical records (EMRs) as a form of health information technology have been in use for decades, but recent advances in technology and continued efforts to streamline and improve the health care system have brought EMRs into the forefront of the current health policy debate. Proposals ranging from health smart cards to personal health databases are being put forward as ways to improve the care of patients and reduce costs at all levels of the health care system. Nevertheless, concerns remain regarding the security of EMRs, particularly with regard to patient privacy.

As a consequence of these concerns, only sixteen percent of primary care physicians in the United States have adopted the use of EMRs in their practices. One barrier to increased acceptance within the medical community is the lack of standards for interoperability between different data management systems. Medical records are legal documents and all records must be maintained in an unaltered form.

The briefing will address the debate on EMRs from several perspectives including new proposals for use, ongoing privacy concerns, voluntary versus mandatory EMR use, and the pros and cons of government involvement in the deployment of EMRs.