Advocates: Gov't needs to push harder for e-health

ADVOCATES: GOV'T NEEDS TO PUSH HARDER FOR E-HEALTH
[SOURCE: InfoWorld, AUTHOR: Grant Gross]
The U.S. government needs to step up its push for electronic health records because they are not being adopted quickly enough, a group of health advocates said Friday. U.S. healthcare providers continue to make errors that hurt tens of thousands of patients each year, and e-health records could prevent many of those problems, said Dr. Alan Lotvin, senior vice president of oncology for Magellan Health Services Inc. The U.S. healthcare system is failing patients "despite the fact we have the knowledge and the technology to really do a much, much better job." About 3.5 percent of all U.S. hospital stays have a drug error associated with them, leading to more than 100,000 significant medical problems and nearly 30,000 deaths each year, said Lotvin, speaking at an e-health forum sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Health IT Now Coalition. U.S. residents should have a "sense of outrage" when confronted with these prescription errors, which would largely be prevented with e-health records, Lotvin said. He compared the U.S. health-care system's record to Amazon.com, which received 2,000 orders per minute during the 2005 holiday shopping season.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/10/26/Government-needs-to-push-harde...