Going Digital?

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By Effie Koliopoulos

Our television sets are not the only items going digital this year.

NPR says that doctors are converting when it comes to medical records. 

Many European countries have already converted to digital patient records that are easily accessible through any computer and medical system.  But why does the U.S. have to do the same?

When I was growing up, I remember going for my annual ‘back to school check-up’ at my pediatrician’s office. The first thing I saw when I went to check in was the endless amounts of beige file folders. Even though I had to wait over twenty minutes each time before my name was called, they never had a problem accessing my files in a swift manner. It always seemed to be there, ready to go, in the doctor’s hand.

According to one pediatrician’s, Cynthia Fishman, office doctors are a bit hesistant. She says that when it comes to scheduling appoinments and organzing payments, it pays off to go digital.

Paper records are more easily accesible than people think. This is how doctors have been taught and what medicial receptionist get paid to do, for many years…and it has worked just fine.

Is it possible that our country has gone technology mad? What risks could this pose for the medical system if one day all these records vanish and paper records are no where to be found? It’s something to take into consideration.

Nonetheless, medical offices are taking the risk. A risk that may be beneficial to busy doctors who see multiple patients a day, and like any human, make a mistake in a patients’ medical file, which could easily be corrected by the help of a computerized database.

There is a federal incentive involved as well- Obama has put $19 billion aside specifically for health information technology. The doctors who use the new electronic method for their Medicare and Medicad patients, will get most of the money.

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