The use of technology is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to healthcare and reform.
The positive aspects stem from the fact that patients usually benefit from the use of technology. Whether it's electronic record keeping, a new diagnostic instrument, or a tool for surgery, or even a simpler and more accurate way to take a patient's temperature, technology is beneficial to the patient's health.
Electronic Medical Records
In healthcare reform discussions, you will often hear about improvements to the system aligned with the use of electronic medical records. These records are kept by providers and the facilities they use to track the health of their patients.
There are many benefits to the use of electronic medical records, not the least of which is the fact that once all patient records are available in electronic form, the cost of recordkeeping will decrease. The real hurdle in the United States today is making sure the records across the country share a platform that will allow a professional in one state to access the records of a patient who may be from another state, either using software or some sort of format that will be common to all doctor's offices and facilities, and can be accessed by the patient as well.
Any possibility of decreasing healthcare costs should always be at the center of healthcare reform conversations.
The Real Costs of Technology
The "curse" that goes along with technology is usually the fact that it increases costs, electronic medical records notwithstanding.
For example, when hospitals and other providers moved to purchase robotic surgical instruments, the million dollar plus pricetag had to be paid for in some way by patients and their insurers. Do outcomes improve? Usually, yes. But that becomes its own problem (see below.)
Further, new technology requires new learning. The professionals who will use the new technology must not only pay for the education, but it requires their time away from seeing patients in order to do the new learning.
Then there is this aspect of improved outcomes: When patients live longer, when their lives are lengthened by successful medical procedures, made more frequently successful by the use of technology, those patients are more expensive. The longer someone lives, the more healthcare resources (money) it requires to keep her alive still longer.
Sometimes newer technology is available, but unless your payer can realize a savings from its use, it may deny coverage for use of that technology. A good example is Medicare's refusal to cover the cost of PET scans (positron emission tomography) for all but a handful of reasons. These scans cost around $1,000 per scan, and often the necessary information can be found in other, less expensive, ways.
When it comes to discussions of healthcare reform and the use of technology, it's difficult to decide how to manage the costs without understanding how each individual advancement in the use of the technology will benefit patients -- and the system.
