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Published - Oct 29th, 2009
By
Joe Q. Public may not understand the finer points of how government agencies tender contracts or hire consultants, just as he fails to comprehend the complexities of switching the province’s health records systems to an electronic model. However, apparently unlike certain high-ranking provincial officials, he can do simple math. And what he sees at the moment does not add up.
The scathing report from the auditor general indicates this province’s taxpayers have spent a billion dollars on developing an electronic health records system, with little to show for it. Ontario is reported to lag far behind the other nine provinces.
At the same time, we are being warned that a third of our hospitals anticipate deficits this year, something not permitted under current legislation. Provincial funding has not kept pace with increases in costs, including hydro, equipment and wages. Many of our hospitals, including large teaching hospitals, are being forced to balance their books through such measures as cutting hours, services and even staff. In this part of the province, it is hospitals themselves that may be cut.
No one is arguing with the need for electronic health records. Most of us have likely experienced a health care professional gathering information that already exists in a file somewhere. Some of us have had treatment delayed or a second X-ray or medical test done because records were not available. In worst-case scenarios, wrong medications have been given and other potentially deadly errors made.
Electronic health records will allow an emergency room doctor or specialist to access a patient’s records instantly, even if his family doctor is in another part of the province. And they will save lives.
So why the delay in computerizing medical records? After all, computer technology is no longer new. While there are still a few of us who remember when mathematicians carried slide rules, not laptops, and when high-tech office machinery meant an electric, not manual typewriter, even the older generation emails and surfs with confidence. Most industries, banks and even government offices would, in fact, have trouble doing business without their computers.
It would seem to a casual observer that health care has at least as much of an interest in having records computerized as, say, a public library. One would expect an industry that routinely uses some of the most sophisticated technology going, to be able to create a province-wide electronic health care records system. Surely it is easier to electronically file a patient history than it is to plot the activity of individual neurons in the human brain. Indeed, there are a number of electronic health care records systems in use in North America.
A billion dollars and all that well-paid expertise should have given this province a superb E-health system. Instead, we are 10th on a list of 10.
A billion dollars would have paid for the education of a lot of nurses and other health care professionals, and covered their salaries for several years as well, with enough left over to hire a few investigators to look into laying criminal charges.
To the casual observer with a passing grade in elementary school math, hijacking a billion of our tax dollars should result in something concrete - if not a decent electronic health records system, then at least some white collar criminals behind bars.
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