Digitalizing the Health Care System — Will It Really Save Us Money?

For the past several years, the hot topic in health care costs has been the advocacy of recording all of our health care information in a grand computer network. This is supposed to save us money over the old fashioned pen and ink record keeping that currently is blamed for major increases in our health care costs. But will the digitalization of records really save us money? The New York Times examines the question in today's issue, with some interesting comments by leading health field experts:

While that is by no means a bad thing, it is also not the hoped-for fix for the nation’s rising health care bill.

“All the new information tools have enormous promise,” said Dr. Brian L. Strom, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, “but they will not necessarily drive down the overall cost of health care.”

* * *

“Information is a dual-edged sword, especially in health care,” said David M. Cutler, a health economist at Harvard. “Better information might blow apart some of the blockbuster markets in the pharmaceutical industry, for example. But it might also increase demand for other drugs in smaller, more focused markets.

“And if better information really helps us understand what is happening in health care,” Mr. Cutler added, “it could well lead to more care for more people and higher costs for the system as a whole.”

* * *

The electronic medical record, for all its promise, is no silver bullet for the nation’s health system. Placing too much faith in technology, skeptics warn, could be counterproductive. Dr. David Himmelstein, a physician and associate professor at the Harvard Medical School, said: “It encourages the belief that we don’t need real reform, all we need is computers.”

Sounds rather like the education thing. Computers were going to revolutionize the school system too. And maybe they did, but on the whole, does anyone believe our education system is producing better educated people than it did 30 - 50 years ago?