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| The Advocate's Perspective on EHRs

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By Larry Dobrow

For a trio of fledgling services that have barely registered on consumers' radars, Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and Revolution Health sure have engendered their share of debate--about whether such systems pose a threat to the sanctity of users' personal health information, about whether even a small percentage of adults truly want to be put in charge of their health information, and more. The three systems, all of which bill themselves as tools to help consumers exert better control over their healthcare decisions, place the burden of inputting and maintaining health information upon the individual.

But once you get past the terminology issues--many commentators stress the need to distinguish information held within Google Health and its ilk from "true" electronic health records (EHR) maintained by physicians, which fall under the regulatory aegis of HIPAA--the question remains: Given the complexity of the U.S. healthcare system, can Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and Revolution Health succeed in their mission, especially at a time when "true" EHRs are slowly making headway in doctors' offices and hospital corridors?

Pundits are split. On one hand, they caution never, ever to bet against the likes of Google or Microsoft. On the other, they question whether concerns over the privacy and security of sensitive personal health information will torpedo the info-intensive systems before they get off the ground.

"My perception is that there's great ambivalence about third-party EHRs [like Google Health]," says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. "Forget about consumers for now--think of it from the doctors' perspective. They're not going to get on board with this unless the information is conveyed in a manner they can fully trust and rely upon. There are obvious malpractice concerns for them. That doesn't mean that there's not some utility to [the third-party EHRs], but the main read I get is ambivalence."

Counters Judy Van Norman, senior director of care transformation at Banner Health, a nonprofit healthcare system in the process of going paperless: "We see a real benefit in the clinical decision support that can be delivered using electronic records. The number of drugs and the amount of clinical information out there is impossible for any one person to hold in a single brain. Let the computers do what they do best, which is remembering billions of pieces of information."

And according to Don Peppers, "History has clearly shown that consumers will trade off a modest amount of privacy protection in return for service that is more convenient or less expensive. I doubt many consumers will obsess about their medical privacy as long as the EHR saves them time and money, even while improving accuracy." He adds, however, that the benefits to the consumer must be genuine, and they must be easily demonstrated.

Those who advocate widespread implementation of systems like Google Health tend to frame their arguments within the context of inefficiencies that exist in the healthcare system. By compiling information about everything from their allergies to prescriptions in a single place, consumers can be assured that such information does not escape notice by a treating physician. This, at least in theory, should lead to better patient care and fewer oversights. Other potential benefits include a reduction in duplicate tests and/or procedures and standardization of care among the healthcare system's many, many providers.

"Right now, you see [health] records transmitted by paper and fax," notes Ross D'Emanuele, a partner at law firm Dorsey & Whitney. "It takes a lot of time to get information from one place to another, and when the information is transmitted there can be problems--pages left out, indecipherable handwriting. Electronic records, even through one of those systems, helps eliminate those errors."

The problem with all this? Even the biggest boosters of EHR management systems have no idea how to make them easily manageable, especially from the aforementioned sanctity-of-information perspective. The sheer number of players involved--physicians, hospitals, insurers, pharmacies et al--make privacy a legitimate concern, because privacy policies tend alternately to overlap and clash. Too, while the financial industry has more or less completely gone electronic, healthcare involves a different set of sensitivities.

Dr. Davis Liu, a physician with the Permanente Medical Group and author of Stay Healthy, Live Longer, Spend Wisely: Making Intelligent Choices in America's Healthcare System, won't give a verdict on the Google Healths of the world just yet ("because I'm not sure the American public wants this responsibility"). At the same time, he says that he wouldn't want his family to be the "guinea pigs" for an entity like Revolution Health. "Imagine if it leaks out through one of these systems that you have HIV, what your employer or anybody else might think. You can't reverse that."

Liu also worries about information-sharing allowances buried deep within online disclaimers, which he believes most consumers will gloss over. "What's Google's business model? Advertising. There's reason to be suspicious."

Dixon echoes his concerns: "A majority of consumers would expect that [the privacy/security safeguards within] HIPAA applies here, but it doesn't. Things around doctor/patient privilege, subpoenas of health records, marketing issues--you can't just wave them away with self-regulation."

Another question yet to be answered to anyone's satisfaction is ownership of the EHR data within health records. Consumers have traditionally assumed that the information belongs to them--that is, if they've given the matter any thought at all. Still, for years, physicians and hospitals have treated that information as if it were their own.

While D'Emanuele suggests that the issue has been framed improperly--"it's really about who has the right to use the data in certain ways and who has the obligation to maintain it"--Dixon is concerned that the consumer voice hasn't been heard amid all the back-and-forth. "It's been a closed process. You have lots of entities with interests here: pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, technology companies, employers. It's almost impossible for consumers to get a word in," she explains.

Clearly the multiple and intertwining debates won't be settled anytime soon, though by the end of 2009 we might have a better clue as to the eventual fate of Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and Revolution Health (as well as others that may pop up). Obviously their fate hinges on whether consumers will get on board, but employers might also have a say. "Imagine if employers start mandating use of these things," Dixon cautions.

Liu won't venture a guess as to when the EHR issues might be resolved, but he believes that consumers and most of the key players have similar interests at heart. "We agree that everything should be interoperable and that healthcare right now doesn't do that. So maybe patients will embrace that responsibility. We all have good intentions, so why not see how it plays out?"

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