ISOM 135
Summer 2013
Reading Assignment # 1
5/20/13

The problem in this case is the U.S. health care industry is the world’s most inefficient information enterprise. An electronic medical record system would save a lot of money in health care, and it would generally be easier on staff and doctor to access information. Electronic records would possibly reduce error and improve care, create less paperwork, and provide quicker service.
The difficulties in building electronic medical record systems include it costing $30,000 to $50,000 per doctor. This would cause an issue for medical practices with fewer than four doctors. Also, training a doctor would take up to 20 hours of his or her time. There would be many obstacles that health providers, IT developers, and insurance companies would need to overcome before this system could be used nationally. Not digitalizing medical records would impact patients. Patients already using this system reduced their hospital admission by 25 percent and the length of their hospital stays by 20 percent. VistA improves patient quality of care. It insures that correct dosages are given and going to the correct patient. As mentioned before, this system would greatly reduce human error. One issue with electronic medical records is the sharing of records between different systems. Some systems may not be able to report the same data to one another. Another problem is there could be a conflict of interest for the insurance companies involved. There are both pros and cons to using electronic medical records. In my opinion, medical record systems in a good solution to the problem of rising health care costs in the United States. I think it would be time consuming and costly in the beginning, but it would be worth it in the long run. The pros seem to outweigh the cons, based on how much patient care would improve, along with