Electronic Record Keeping?

Just like in any good corporate vision statement, marketing plan, and/or program a bare minimum requirement for a successful campaign is for everyone to speak the same language. To quote a former client, “everyone must sing from the same hymnal.” In a CNN article by John King (Cleveland Clinic pushes into future), he quoted the CEO of Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Toby Cosgrove, saying “he believes electronic record keeping—and sharing—will lead to few duplicative tests and other cost savings....” What is electronic record keeping? Surely he meant EHR, electronic health records.

“Why am I nitpicking, why is this important” you asked. First of all, Cleveland Clinic is not just some provider in obscurity in the Midwest. This clinic is often cited as a model of what healthcare reform would have other providers to do. President Obama quite often cites the Cleveland Clinic when talking about his healthcare reform package. The doctors and executive management team at Cleveland Clinic are frequently consulted by lawmakers, industry experts and others. So if anyone should have been up to par on the correct terminology for the administration’s reform package, Dr. Cosgrove should have been. Secondly, as President Obama’s healthcare plan gasps for air, it’s important that a consistent and clear message is articulated if his plan is to succeed. And thirdly, referring to EHR as electronic record keeping marginalizes the impact and complexity of electronic health records management. Just like the term “book keeping” does to “financial analysis.” The next time you see a financial analyst or an accountant for that matter, refer to them as a bookkeeper and see what happens.

As information technologists, whether you agree with the proposed healthcare reforms or not, you must be clear and consistent when addressing the topic of electronic health records. Now is not the time to cause confusion, it will come back to bite you. As you know, if systems are implemented when confusion is in the air IT is the function that usually suffers, or is blamed.

Read entire CNN article here.