As part of a pilot project, the clinic's patients can view their medical records online and communicate with doctors on MedicaLogic's AboutMyHealth.net site, now called 98point6.com. Patient Michael Kennedy has been using the service since August. He says reading his medical record and e-mailing Magsarili has cut his visits to the clinic. It's also improved the accuracy of his records. "I noticed they had listed a medication I was not on anymore. I told Karl and he took it off," says Kennedy, a 34-year-old health policy analyst for the state of Oregon.
Elixis, which supplies its WebCoder medical record to the University of Washington Medical Center, also plans to give patients online access to their medical charts.
Whether online medical records can ultimately make a dent in medical errors will depend on the extent of their use by physicians and the adoption of standards that allow doctors and hospitals to share information regardless of which online service they're using. If a patient's primary physician uses online medical records but his specialists do not - or if they use a different service - the benefits are reduced.
While potential cost savings from the use of online medical records could be huge, their limited use so far has not generated any hard data on whether they improve patients' health or cut costs. But Richard Gibson, Providence Health System's chief medical officer, says preliminary surveys indicate that giving patients an online medical record has at least reduced the time staff members spend answering phone inquiries.
The immediate challenge will be to persuade physicians to trade their pen for a mouse. "Doctors still will write a note that I can't read and then dictate it, and it'll take four days for the transcription to come back," says Edward Boyle, a University of Washington Medical Center surgeon and Elixis cofounder. Case in point: As a nurse updates a patient's online chart by pointing and clicking, a doctor stands nearby and dictates his notes into a tape recorder. Physicians who use Logician Internet can use a voice-recognition system to record their notes directly into the medical record.
Another hindrance to doctors' adoption of online medical records is that they're tethered to a desktop PC. That will change this year as Elixis and MedicaLogic introduce versions of their records that can run on PalmPilots and other handheld devices.
Heart surgeon Farivar believes patient demand and a new generation of doctors will drive a change. "Look at this," he says, flipping through a paper chart filled with handwritten notes. "Can you read this? I can't. There's a complete change of paradigm coming."
A Plane Crash Every Other Day
Medical mistakes exact a huge toll in lives and dollars.
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