Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE Menu

All items for March, 2019

Permalink:

Politics of Electronic Medical Records

Politics of Electronic Medical Records

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

The EMR project that President Obama forced on the medical profession in 2009 has not yet produced any evidence that EMR will save the country $350 billion in inpatient care and $150 billion dollars in outpatient care over a 15 year period of time.

The RAND analysts claim that more than $350 billion would be saved on inpatient care and nearly $150 billion on outpatient care over a 15-year period of time. 

The RAND EMR study was wrong. The study sounded good to President Obama because he thought EMRs would enable the federal government to control medical and surgical practices in America.

Unfortunately, data from three other studies, a cardiology group, a Harvard group and Canadian group showed there is no savings difference between paper records and electronic records.

The project has been a $38 billion dollar failure. I predicted the EMR project would fail in 2011. EMRs are a great idea. The EMR projects goals were wrong.

Wall Street Journal article in 2012 stated,  The electronic medical record (EMR) is touted as the key to containing costs, reducing errors, improving quality, and simplifying administration: an “elegant exercise in wishful thinking.

The RAND Corporation study was paid for by all the vested interests stakeholders involved in medical care except physicians and patients.

Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, the Cerner Corporation and Epic Systems of Verona, Wis. are the major EMR software companies who paid for the study.

In February 2009, after years of behind-the-scenes lobbying by Allscripts and others, legislation to promote the use of electronic records was signed into law as part of President Obama’s economic stimulus bill.

GE and the healthcare insurance industry were also major funders of the RAND Study. The Obama administration funded the implementation of the EMR project to the detriment of the healthcare system.

The healthcare system has not contained costs, reduced errors, improved quality or simplified administration. Each category has gotten worse.

I do not think the Obama administration’s primary interest was to fix the existing healthcare system.   If the EMR project hobbled the healthcare system, the population would beg the government to completely take over institute his “Public Option” and subsequently “Medicare for All.” There was no consideration of the fact that that Medicare and Medicaid are unsustainable.

The complete control of the VA Healthcare System has not worked out very well for the government. One important reason for the VA Healthcare System’s failure is the bloated government bureaucracy. Effective medical care takes instantaneous judgement and rapid execution. Government regulations inhibit the process leading to long waiting times and ineffective and costly treatment.

Medicare and Medicaid costs have been unsustainable and are getting worse. Why would a politician think complete government control over 20% of the GDP, the healthcare system, would be any better than a free market system where patients would take responsibility for their healthcare and healthcare dollars?

The government could provide the dollars to the needy with financial incentives attached for all in the system.

Ideal EMR should be for the benefit of physicians and their patients. The EMR should not be only for the financial benefit of healthcare insurance companies, the government,  the pharmacy benefit managers and the software companies.

The EMR project places the secondary stakeholder in the position to judge physicians’ behavior and subsequently penalize them if they do not comply with government regulations and expected results.

The EMR should be a tool to continually educate physicians to help them become better. It should educate patients so they can become professors of their disease and help them avoid the complications of their chronic diseases.

The EMR should not be a tool used by secondary stakeholders to penalize physicians and patients. This will not decrease the ever-increasing cost of healthcare.

At the moment EMRs are relatively useless. A lot of money has been spent by all the stakeholders with very limited benefit. There have been hundreds of examples published by all stakeholders about the defects in the present EMRs that do not allow for an increase in the quality of care and a decrease in the cost of care.

 My ideal EMR along with my ideal medical saving accounts can go a long way toward repairing the healthcare system. http://stanfeld.com/is_an_ideal_ele/

 

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.



Copywrite 2006-2019

Please have a friend subscribe

  • Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

Why Vermont’s Single Party Payer Healthcare Plan Failed

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP,MACE

Vermont’s single party payer healthcare plan was doomed to fail from the onset for several reasons.

Vermont had a Republican governor for eight years. He decided to retire.  Peter Shumlin (D.) won the Democratic nomination for governor after progressive activists demanded that each candidate for the Democratic Party nomination promise to enact single-payer health care if nominated.

Shumlin’s got the nod, won the election. He was anxious to pass the single party payer system.

Vermont’s consultants were Harvard’s William Hsiao and MIT’s Jonathan Gruber.

William Hsiao has spent most of his academic career helping governments install single-payer healthcare systems.

There is little evidence that the systems by developed in Taiwan and other countries by William Hsiao have been successful. They have not been cost effective or sustainable. They have not preserved freedom of choice.

Gruber and Hsiao made the same mistakes for Vermont that they made for America with Obamacare.

Hsiao and Gruber promised that single-payer health care in Vermont could save $1.6 billion over ten years. With that endorsement in hand, Shumlin and the legislature passed Act 48, a law instructing the state to figure out how to finance a single-payer system. They dubbed it Green Mountain Care.

Governor Shumlin said, “If Vermont gets single-payer health care right, which I believe we will, other states will follow,” pronounced Shumlin. “If we screw it up, it will set back this effort for a long time. So I know we have a tremendous amount of responsibility, not only to Vermonters.”

Unfortunately, Americans have a short memory, the short memory promoted by the conformational bias of the traditional mass media toward a progressive agenda.

Progressive Americans and their progressive politicians had better wake up fast. “Medicare for All” does not work.

Medicare does not work in a financially sustainable way for the government or seniors. It was not sustainable in the Bernie Sanders small state of Vermont. It is nice to believe you can provide healthcare benefits for nothing to all. However, nothing is free especially when it is run by central bureaucrats. It has been proven over and over again.

First, bureaucrats and healthcare policy consultants do not understand the medical care system. The history of Vermont’s single- payor story is interesting.

In December 2014 Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin (D.) announced that he was pulling the plug after four years on Vermont’s single-payer, government-run health care system.

“In my judgment,” Governor Shumlin said, “the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families, and the state’s economy.”

Rather than saving $1.6 billion the Green Mountain Care would cost an additional 2.6 billion dollars in tax revenue for 2017 alone. The law would require a 151 percent increase in state taxes.

“Fiscally, that’s a train wreck. Even a skeptical report from Avalere health had previously assumed that the plan would “only” cost $1.9 to $2.2 billion extra in 2017.”

“In 2019, Costa estimated that Green Mountain Care would have required $2.9 billion in tax revenue vs. $1.8 billion under pre-existing law: a 160 percent increase in revenue.”

The result should explain why the dream of single-payer health care in the U.S. should be dead for the foreseeable future.

Daily, we read articles calling for “Medicare for All” from progressive politicians running for office.

How stupid do they think Americans are?

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.



Copywrite 2006-2019

Please have a friend subscribe

  • Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.