HEALTHeLINK™ Database Gets More Backing

Imagine being taken to an emergency room at a hospital in Buffalo, yet the doctors on duty are able to call up the medical records your personal physician has on file.

That’s the ultimate goal of the push to create a nationwide system of keeping medical records in an electronic system that can be accessed whenever — and wherever — they’re needed.

Locally, the Buffalo Niagara region’s major hospital groups and health insurers are backing the efforts of a nonprofit initiative called HEALTHeLINK™ to develop an electronic medical records exchange in the eight counties of Western New York.

By making medical records available electronically, advocates believe health care costs could be cut by $200 billion to $300 billion a year, mainly by eliminating duplicate medical tests ordered by physicians who don’t have access to the original results.

“You get better medical care at reduced cost,” said James Boldt, the president of Computer Task Group, a Buffalo- based information technology firm that is focusing on electronic medical records as a growth business. The company is working with HEALTHeLINK™ in the efforts to expand the electronic medical records network locally.

The system also will increase efficiency, reduce medical errors and streamline operations.

“At the end of this, it’s about improving efficiency, which means saving money,” said Daniel E. Porreca, executive director of HEALTHeLINK™. “We’ve got to get the physicians aware of the advantages.”

But it’s also expensive, with the implementation of an electronic medical records system nationally estimated to cost upwards of $100 billion and take 10 years to complete, averaging about $40,000 to $60,000 per physician.

The initiatives have gained momentum in recent months, especially after Congress in February set aside $19 billion in fiscal stimulus funds to help doctors and hospitals adopt systems that allow them to create and share medical records electronically. The federal government also is requiring hospitals to use electronic medical records by 2015 or face penalties.

But that stimulus funding is backloaded, set aside to reimburse doctors and hospitals that install electronic medical records technology only after they have started making “meaningful use” of the system.

Typically, that can take up to 18 months for a doctor’s office and as long as three years for hospitals, Boldt said, forcing the physicians and hospitals to line up their own interim financing and wait for reimbursement.

“The biggest problem, at this point, is money,” Boldt said. “Many of our cusomters are looking to do this, but they’re trying to figure out how to get the financing to do it.”

With the economy slumping and banks and other lenders taking a much more critical view of potential borrowers, Boldt said that financing has become harder to obtain.

Electronic medical records also require significant training for doctors and office staff, which takes time and effort on the part of the physicians and their aides.

“Nobody is going to say ‘It was easier than I thought,’ ” Porreca said.

In the long run, though, Porreca said electronic medical records will be well worth it, both in terms of efficiency and cost savings.

The challenge now is to convince local doctors to start embracing electronic medical records. Large local medical practices, such as Buffalo Medical Group, already have made the switch. So far, about 160 local health care providers are using the local system, which contains about 17 million individual medical records.

That record system is growing steadily. Patients must give their consent before their medical records can be saved electronically, and Porreca said the vast majority choose to do so when asked.

About 100 patients each day are giving their consent to be part of the system when they go to the emergency room at Erie County Medical Center, which is one of the hospitals participating in the HEALTHeLINK™ network, along with the Catholic Health System and Kaleida Health.

“If the doctors don’t come to use it and the patients don’t give their consent, we’re not going to be able to reach our objective,” Porreca said.

Electronic medical records systems include extensive safeguards to protect the privacy of a patient’s personal information. Boldt said the security safeguards on the electronic medical records systems is tighter than the protections consumers now encounter with Internet-based banking.

In addition, a patient’s medical records are more secure in electronic form than they are when they’re on paper, where they can be copied by anyone with access to the files, Boldt said.

Boldt believes the implementation of electronic medical records systems will be a growing business, not only for CTG but companies nationwide.

Locally, CTG expects the electronic medical records initiative to be a prime source of jobs for the region’s college graduates, not just those with computer science degrees but also those with training in biology and other sciences.

Boldt said the company could train about 400 to 600 graduates a year to help install electronic medical records systems in hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices, regularly moving around the country as the new technology is adopted in different regions.

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