Comment – Opinion. I was reading some of the pros and cons of online medical records, but will discount the pros in this essay because they are blatantly supported by the liberal left – which makes the whole concept flawed, (in my opinion), because privacy issues are involved, (though I would be interested in seeing how many times a day Pelosi sticks her finger down her throat.)
The cons on the other hand are more than a few, however, I found one that really puts a reality spin on the whole concept. In a Los Angeles Times Article-Health, Monday, July 20, 2009….As follows: ”In March, as President Obama was announcing his plans for health care reform, Harvard Dr.s Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal questioning some of the, (online), records purported benefits. They wrote, “A study of Orthopedic surgeons comparing hand held PDA electronic records to paper records, showed an increase in wrong and redundant diagnoses using the computer – 48 compared to seven on paper. But the propagation of mistakes is not restricted to misdiagnoses. Once the data is keyed in it is rarely re-checked with respect to accuracy.”
I don’t know about you, but just that aspect is enough to recommend not following through on electronic record keeping. However, that being said I believe that more is in play here because we do not know who will have access to those records. I believe this to be a dangerous precedent. Just my opinion.
Beaudreaux
Correct me if I’m wrong but if most of today’s college grads can neither read, write nor perform rudimentry mathmatical calculations doesn’t common sense dictate that as a feel good nation we should provide hand held PDF’s to all health care professionals?