Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Medical records = transparency = trouble for medical industry

Via @timoreilly, an article in Technology Review gives its take on why the medical industry has been so resistant to going electronic. Surprise - it's all about the money...
Dangling $19 billion in front of a $2.4 trillion industry is not nearly enough to get it to reveal the financial secrets that electronic health records are likely to uncover--and upon which its huge profits depend. In those medical records lie the ugly truth about the business of medicine: sickness is profitable. The greater the number of treatments, procedures, and hospital stays, the larger the profit. There is little incentive for doctors and hospitals to identify or reduce wasteful spending in medicine.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Dave -- this seems to echo the comments from yesterday's New Yorker article -- which I found very interesting BTW so thanks for posting.

xx Elizabeth