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Medical offices gradually switching to electronic records

by Ashton Goodell
Tuesday, March 17, 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Visiting the doctor's office you can expect two things: paperwork and a wait time.

But a new record system might do away with one of those two things. Doctors say it's a wonder offices still use paper charts.

"If this were the banking industry or any other industry we would be bankrupt," Dr. Tom Nighswander said.

The Alaska eHealth Network is designing a system to exchange medical records. The network would allow you and your doctor to access your medical information anywhere.

"The No. 1 reason is for patient safety," said Rebecca Madison director of the Alaska eHealth Network. "You've probably heard horror stories (about people) who had drug interactions or have tests done by mistake just because there's not a way to transfer records."

The network won't have a central database where patient information is stored. All the data will be in your doctor's office and will stay there, but offices will share the information through a network.

"It's less time consuming as far as the time it takes to make a chart," said Yanira Williams, a doctor's office administrator.

Patients have raised concerns about privacy. They are worried someone could potentially hack the system or get into private records.

"A lot of people are nervous about their stuff being scanned into the system, so they are a little bit hesitant about identity theft," Williams said.

Some doctors say paper databases aren't necessarily safer.

"Paper charts have just always been messy and difficult to organize, difficult to gather information from, easy to lose," Dr. Jerome List said.

Electronic records could replace the bulk of paper records, and a patient has full control over who accesses their health records.

Electronic records work kind of like an ATM -- the information you see on the screen isn't transmitted and can't be pulled up by someone else after it's closed.

You might go home or to the office and look at your bank statement online -- the same applies for the e-network. You can look up your information at any time to see who last touched the record.

"You can see who actually looked at your record for how long and for what purpose," Nighswander said.

The e-network is voluntary, so it's up to you whether you want to be on the system, and if so who you'll allow access to your records.

Some doctors have already switched to electronic records, but they said it wasn't easy.

"Early on document scanning was very difficult," List said. "Scanning did not get saved and so on and so forth, so yes, I had some bumps along the road to show for it."

The goal now is to exchange those records between offices, probably two years down the road.

A move toward electronic record keepers will eliminate jobs in doctors' offices. The eHealth Network says the system would cut jobs but would also cut other costs like the mailing of records.

They say that savings would pass along to patients.

The e-network says it needs $20 million to finish the system. Some of the state's stimulus money could go toward the project.

Contact Ashton Goodell at agoodell@ktuu.com