Newt Gingrich discusses need for more physicians to adopt electronic health record systems

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) on Monday at a health care symposium sponsored by Siemens said that the Bush administration and Congress should do more to implement electronic health records nationwide, the Baltimore Sun reports.

Gingrich, founder of the Center for Health Transformation, said, "It's been a very great disappointment that the administration has not proposed to go to 100%" EHRs. According to Gingrich, Congress could have used funds directed toward the subprime mortgage loan bailout to help finance a conversion from paper records to EHRs.

The federal government will spend up to $150 million over the next five years for health care information technology, compared with $11 billion for the British government and $1 billion for the Canadian government. Many experts maintain that implementation of EHRs nationwide will reduce medical errors and costs and improve care. However, 90% of U.S. physicians and two-thirds of hospitals nationwide currently use paper records.

In addition to EHRs, Gingrich said that the U.S. needs to focus on preventive care. He said, "There's a big lag between the current political conversation and the next generation of ideas" (Kohn, Baltimore Sun, 4/29).

Medical Record Concerns

Two newspapers on Tuesday published articles on concerns about medical records. Summaries appear below.

• USA Today: The article examined the problems patients can face when they attempt to "obtain medical records from hospitals and other treatment facilities after something goes wrong." Under the medical privacy rule issued after passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, patients or their designated representatives have the right to view and copy their medical records, although the rule allows health care providers to withhold medical records in some cases, provided that they explain the reason. According to USA Today, although "there are no statistics on such cases, disputes over medical records often are at the crux of malpractice lawsuits" (Davis, USA Today, 4/29).
• Wall Street Journal: The article examined how the health care industry represents the "main threat" to the privacy of patient medical records, as hospitals, health insurers and federal employees have become involved in a "spate of recent security lapses." In an effort to prevent a "steady stream of privacy breaches" that "threatens to undermine the health care industry's effort to adopt electronic medical records," many "hospitals have been installing controls that limit by job function the types of data that employees can see," the Journal reports. However, according to the Journal, "institutions also are reluctant to control access to patients' private data too tightly, for fear that doing so could get in the way of patient care, especially in emergencies" (Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal, 4/29).