Gingrich: Electronic health records needed faster

Republicans in Congress defeated a national health-care plan advanced by Clinton in the early 1990s, when she was U.S. first lady, but Gingrich said Wednesday 100 percent insurance coverage is needed in the U.S. He called the U.S. insurance system, where insurance companies can choose to cover the healthiest people, "stunningly irrational."

Efforts to convert government health-care services to electronic health records have met resistance, Gingrich said. When he's asked Medicare officials to convert so that the government health insurance program for retired people can be ready for retiring baby boomers, those officials have dragged their feet, he said. Paper medical records don't make sense for baby boomers, many of who will travel during retirement and live 20 or 30 years after retiring, he said.

Government officials and some insurance companies have been slow to see the long-term benefit of a small up-front investment in new technology such as electronic health records, he said. Converting to electronic health records would save the larger cost of faxing and updating millions of baby boomers' paper medical records over 20 years, he said.

While Gingrich talked of the benefits of electronic health records, other speakers at the WEDI conference spoke of difficulties with the transition away from paper. Many hospitals and doctor's offices are still lacking in information security, physical security and privacy protection practices that will be needed with electronic health records, said David Ginsberg, a privacy law consultant for the California Medical Association.

"If the back door is left open all the time, and the front door has a crappy lock, what good are all your controls, if someone walks off with your computer?" he said.

Ginsberg also warned health-care facilities to compare and test electronic health record systems before spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to convert from paper. No standard platform exists yet for electronic health records, and some packages try to force doctors to drastically change the way they work, he said.

"Now you're asking physicians to change their workflow habits," Ginsberg said. "That doesn't happen easily."