MJ, A Case For EHR

Could EHR have prevented Michael Jackson’s allegedly abuse of prescription drugs? Saying EHR could “prevent” prescription drug abuse may be a bit far reaching, but it definitely makes it more difficult for prescription drugs to be obtained fraudulently. Before you close your browser session, navigate to another web page, or write me off as having drank the “EHR Kool-Aid,” hear me out.

There's basically only one of three ways, or a combination thereof, for a person to easily obtain and abuse prescription drugs. The abuser must either visit several different physicians to obtain several prescriptions, enlist the help of others to obtain unnecessary prescriptions written in their name that eventually gets passed on to the abuser, and/or find a physician that would write fraudulent prescriptions.

The first scenario, one person visiting several doctors, currently physicians depend on the patient to self identify their past medical and medication history. What makes scenario one plausible is that a patient can see several doctors and conveniently forgets to inform the other physician of their current medications. With EHRs, all doctors will have access to the patients’ history as reported by the patient’s providers. Since the overwhelming majority of doctors are honest, this scenario is unlikely to contribute to the abuse of prescription drugs under an EHR system.

The second scenario, multiple people obtaining unneccessary prescriptions to be later passed on the abuser. Under EHR would someone really want to risk getting a prescription for someone else, to later be possibly denied this prescription when actually needed? Or worse yet, run the risk of altering their future treatment plans because of fraudulent prescriptions in their EHR?

The last scenario a dishonest provider writing uneccessary prescriptions. Although EHRs cannot prevent a physician from writing fraudulent scripts, but because EHR captures the patient’s history, and the visibility of EHR records by other providers may deter some from being dishonest. Similarly to home alarms, if a burglar wants to break into your specific house, a home alarm system would not stop it. Just like EHR doesn’t stop a dishonest physician from writing fraudulent scripts. However, a Rutgers University study, using five years of data, scientifically proved that burglars tend to avoid homes with alarm systems. So the fear of physicians being exposed by EHR’s historical prescription data, individuals not wanting to risk their own health and treatment with fraudulent data in their EHR, and physicians would have an accurate picture of a patient’s current and past treatments would inherently would reduce the number of fraudulent scripts written hence reducing the opportunity to abuse prescription drugs.

Maybe I did have a sip, or two, of the “EHR Kool-Aid.”

Read the complete Rutgers press release here.

Click here to see HIMSS definition of HER.