The U.S. government claimed that turning American medical charts into electronic records would make health care better, safer, and cheaper. Ten years and $36 billion later, the system is an unholy mess. Inside a digital revolution that took a bad turn.
By Fred Schulte and Erika Fry
Kaiser Health News, March 18, 2019
In early 2017, Seema Verma, then the country’s newly appointed CMS administrator, went on a listening tour. She visited doctors around the country, at big urban practices and tiny rural clinics, and from those front-line physicians she consistently heard one thing: They hated their electronic health records. “Physician burnout is real,” she told KHN and Fortune. The doctors spoke of the difficulty in getting information from other systems and providers, and they complained about the government’s reporting requirements, which they perceived as burdensome and not meaningful.
What she heard then became suddenly personal one summer day in 2017, when her husband, himself a physician, collapsed in the airport on his way home to Indianapolis after a family vacation. For a frantic few hours, the CMS administrator fielded phone calls from first responders and physicians — Did she know his medical history? Did she have information that could save his life? — and made calls to his doctors in Indiana, scrambling to piece together his record, which should have been there in one piece. Her husband survived the episode, but it laid bare the dysfunction and danger inherent in the existing health information ecosystem.
The notion that one EHR should talk to another was a key part of the original vision for the HITECH Act, with the government calling for systems to be eventually interoperable.
What the framers of that vision didn’t count on were the business incentives working against it. A free exchange of information means that patients can be treated anywhere. And though they may not admit it, many health providers are loath to lose their patients to a competing doctor’s office or hospital. There’s a term for that lost revenue: “leakage.” And keeping a tight hold on patients’ medical records is one way to prevent it.
In the absence of true incentives for systems to communicate, the industry limped along; some providers wired up directly to other select providers or through regional exchanges, but the efforts were spotty. A Cerner-backed interoperability network called CommonWell formed in 2013, but some companies, including dominant Epic, didn’t join. (“Initially, Epic was neither invited nor allowed to join,” said Sumit Rana, senior vice president of R&D at Epic. Jitin Asnaani, executive director of CommonWell countered, “We made repeated invitations to every major EHR … and numerous public and private invitations to Epic.”)
Epic then supported a separate effort to do much the same.
Last spring, Verma attempted to kick-start the sharing effort and later pledged a war on “information blocking,” threatening penalties for bad actors. She has promised to reduce the documentation burden on physicians and end the gag clauses that protect the EHR industry. Regarding the first effort at least, “there was consensus that this needed to happen and that it would take the government to push this forward,” she said. In one sign of progress last summer, the dueling sharing initiatives of Epic and Cerner, the two largest players in the industry, began to share with each other — though the effort is fledgling.
When it comes to patients, though, the real sharing too often stops. Despite federal requirements that providers give patients their medical records in a timely fashion, in their chosen format and at low cost (the government recommends a flat fee of $6.50 or less), patients struggle mightily to get them. A 2017 study by researchers at Yale found that of America’s 83 top-rated hospitals, only 53 percent offer forms that provide patients with the option to receive their entire medical record. Fewer than half would share records via email. One hospital charged more than $500 to release them.
Nor, it seems, can high-ranking federal officials. When Seema Verma’s husband was discharged from the hospital after his summer health scare, he was handed a few papers and a CD-ROM containing some medical images — but missing key tests and monitoring data. Said Verma, “We left that hospital and we still don’t have his information today.” That was nearly two years ago.
The Decade of Health Information Technology: Delivering Consumer-centric and Information-rich Health Care
By David J. Brailer, MD, PhD, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
PNHP Quote of the Day (excerpts), July 21, 2004
While the federal government plays an important role in HIT adoption, the effective use of, and value creation from, this technology lies predominantly with the private sector. The federal government will provide a vision and a strategic direction for a national interoperable health care system, but will rely on a competitive technology industry, privately operated support services, and shared investments in HIT adoption. The private sector must develop the market institutions to deliver the products and services that can transform the paper-based health care system into an electronic, consumer-centered, and quality-based system. The private sector can best ensure that HIT products are successfully implemented in ways that meet the varying needs of American health care across settings, cultures, and geographies. The private sector can also continue constant innovation in HIT and ensure that products are delivered on an affordable basis.
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
Posted July 21, 2004
What has the magic of the competitive marketplace produced in the way of an integrated IT system to this date? High costs, very poor penetration, and system failures! Competitive market theory dictates that we should be leading the world with a high quality health care IT system at a low cost. What went wrong?
First of all, a fragmented system of multiple private plans, public programs and uninsurance does not provide an infrastructure that is very conducive to an integrated IT system. A single payer system, or, at minimum, a highly regulated system of universal coverage through multiple plans, would provide a framework that would ensure adaptability of an integrated IT system. Of course, a single, publicly administered system would be much preferred for an integrated IT system.
But the greatest difficulty with private IT solutions lies in the very nature of these marketplace models. Their goals are, above all, to maximize profits and to maximize the market price of their shares.
What might the private sector do that doesn’t serve our interests well? They will produce products that command the highest prices that the market will bear. They will design the products to provide a continuing revenue stream. Once gaining a significant share of the market, they will design incompatibility with other systems in an attempt to garner the entire market. They will design obsolescence into their systems to ensure future markets for their new innovative products. They will partner with and perhaps acquire other related entities that can expand profit potentials through greater control of components of the health care system which their products can influence. Although these are good business practices, they are terrible policies for our health care system.
The health information technology report released today (July 21, 2004) should alarm us all. Although we all agree on the importance of an integrated IT system, the Bush administration is limiting the role of the government to being an enabler that encourages the private sector to develop a successful business model. Rather than higher quality at a lower cost, we’ll end up with mediocrity at a much higher cost, wasting even more of our health care dollars.
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
Posted March 18, 2019
Fifteen years ago, and several times since, we’ve had quite a bit to say about the direction the nation was taking with electronic health records. The narrative in the comprehensive article today by Fred Schulte and Erika Fry comes as no surprise to us. The results of insisting that the project remain in the hands of competitors in the private marketplace, with a hands-off approach by our government stewards, has been a disaster.
It is ironic that CMS Administrator Seema Verma – an outspoken proponent of privatizing all things medical – two years after her husband’s emergency hospitalization, has been unable to obtain his electronic medical records. So much for the efficiency of the private sector.
Yet, Judith Faulkner, CEO and Founder of Epic Systems – the nation’s leading medical-record software provider – as of 3/18/19, ranks #597 on the Forbes list with a net worth of $3.8 billion.
Our health information technology system represents just a microcosm of our $3.8 trillion national health expenditures in a system that leads all nations in high costs while shamefully underperforming on universality, equity, efficiency, and affordable access. We know how to correct the deficiencies – simply enact and implement a well designed, publicly-administered and publicly-financed, single payer Medicare for All program. Yet the majority of our politicians, but by no means all, are rejecting Medicare for All as they insist on protecting and perpetuating our highly dysfunctional, multi-payer health care financing system.
The results of the refusal of our public stewards to be more involved in guiding our health information technology system surely must provide us with a lesson. Public systems in health care are designed as patient service models, whereas private systems are designed as business models. One directs the flow of money to enhance the care of patients, and the other directs that flow to enhance the financial success of the business entity. One has the objective of good health, and the other the objective of wealth enhancement. If that is difficult for Seema Verma to understand, maybe Judith Faulkner can explain it to her.
On a positive note, it should be mentioned that Judith Faulkner has signed The Giving Pledge, committing 99% of her assets to philanthropy. Business success in trying to deliver a public good does not necessarily equate with greed.
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