Should The Use of Electronic Medical Records Be Expanded?

Because efficiency is lacking in the American healthcare system, some are arguing to expand the use of electronic medical records. Switching to some form of universal digitized record would “Improve quality and convenience of patient care, increase patient participation in their care, improve accuracy of diagnoses and health outcomes, improve care coordination, and increase practice efficiencies and cost savings” (“Benefits of Electronic Health Records (EHRs)”). T.R. Reid also discusses the advantages of electronic medical records by using France as an example in his book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. As of 2009, France had the highest rated healthcare system. France’s administrative costs make up less than 5% of what is spent on healthcare. This can be attributed, at least partly, to the carte vitale, or the Vital Card, which is a green plastic credit card with a small gold memory chip in the middle, the central administrative tool of French medicine; it contains the patient’s entire medical record, all the way back to 1998. According to Reid, it is “the secret weapon that makes French medical care so much more efficient than anything Americans are used to” (58). Reid’s discussion of the carte vitale in such a positive manner sheds light on the benefits America would receive by incorporating this form of an electronic medical record. According to Richard Hillestad, PhD, “If 90 percent of hospitals and doctors’ offices participated, we could save about $80 billion a year” (“18 Big Ideas to Improve Health Care Now”). Accordingly, many people believe that switching to electronic medical records would save a lot of money, thus increasing the efficiency of the American healthcare s...

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...esembles a system of a foreign country. As Reid puts it, “The real problem with those foreign health care system is that they’re foreign. That offends the mind-set - sometimes referred to as American exceptionalism - that says our strong, wealthy, and enormously productive country is sui generis and doesn’t need to borrow any ideas from the rest of the world” (13). Since this kind of reform would be a big deal in our society, what I have concluded is that the first step that we can realistically take as individuals it to educate ourselves as well as the people around us, one of the three purposes of my survey. Since our government more than others responds to the will of the people, by reducing our ignorance on the issue and understanding and advocating the benefits of a single-payer system, this reform can be achieved, increasing the efficiency of our healthcare.