The insurance companies rush to increase premiums and the drug companies rush to increase prices. Is there anything that will save America from the greed of the health care industry? Computerized records, yeah that’s it. Putting all of our medical records on hard drives will do it.
Not really according to Harvard University researchers. Their review of roughly 4,000 hospitals from 2003 to 2007 found that while many had moved away from the paper files that still dominate the U.S. healthcare system, administrative costs actually rose, even among the most high-tech institutions. Advocates of such technology have been pushing for greater use of computerized health records to prevent costly errors and allow greater coordination among caregivers and patients. But adoption has been slow, prompting Congress to offer $19 billion in incentives as part of an economic stimulus bill. The researchers found administrative costs increased at facilities that computerized. Hospitals with the highest costs tended to be smaller, for-profit, non-teaching ones in cities, they added. The results of the study are in the American Journal of Medicine.