United Kingdom Ends $17 Billion Electronic Medical Records Initiative

The Wall Street Journal on Sept 23, 2011 reported that the United Kingdom will scrap the entire electronic medical records (EMR) initiative that has been 9 years in the making with nearly 6.4 billion pounds already spent.

That action was hinted at back in August 2011 after a scathing parliamentary report stating the initiative to be wasteful and incapable of delivery.

I'm not surprised...

It's hard enough to get a group of doctors in one hospital to agree with a treatment plan let alone agree to a medical records system. The problem is exponentially more difficult when applying it to an entire country.

Physicians practice medicine differently... just like teachers have their own unique way of teaching kids. A method that may work for one doctor or teacher will not work for another. Even the method may change depending on how "busy" things are (teacher with a class of 5 kids versus 30 kids) so a doctor in a busy inner-city emergency room will have different flows and needs from an electronic medical records than a rural family practice with a sedate pace. Furthermore, the needs of a dermatologist is very different from a pediatrician. One can't expect a single EMR system to meet the needs of both perfectly just like one cannot expect a math teacher to use the same teaching methods as a singing teacher.

Forcing physicians to use a single standard electronic medical records without adapting to these realities is bound to fail no matter how much time, training, software, and hardware you throw at it.

A better alternative (my opinion), is to treat electronic medical records like the computers they reside on. There should be many different types of EMR systems just like there are MANY different types of computer models, speeds, makes, cost, sizes, etc.

However, unlike current EMR systems, in spite of who makes a computer and what operating system software it runs, it has standardized components... USB, Firewire, HDMI, VGA, BlueTooth, etc. as well as a universal communication medium called the "internet" that works with phones, computers, laptops, etc regardless of who makes it and what software it is on.

You would think that an EMR system given its digital essence would be able to easily communicate with other systems... but no... they don't communicate at all... which is why paper reports still exist... which are than scanned into the EMR.

Rather than the government (whether the United Kingdom or the United States) dictating what physicians must do and mandating EMR initiatives, I believe the money would be much better spent on mandating inter-operability and communication standards. The free market will create the best EMR systems and physicians will pick the one that best meets their need.

The other more insidious side of EMR is the over-reaching health goal mandates which means well, but runs into the same problem of applying standards to all physicians. Take "meaningful use" set by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). One of the core measures of meaningful use is adult weight-screening and follow-up.

Now as an ENT specialist, I see patients specifically for earwax. Why in the world would I want to perform a weight-screening when all I want to do (and what the patient only wants me to do) is get earwax out???

Makes no sense.

Does it to you???

Reference:
U.K. Scrapping National Health IT Network. InformationWeek Healthcare. Aug 4, 2011
U.K. Ends Health-Service IT Upgrade. Wall Street Journal. Sept 23, 2011