Bill would mandate electronic medical records
Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray is pushing a bill that would require the state to adopt electronic medical records and ban pharmaceutical marketing gifts.
The bill would set aside $25 million to help create a statewide system of electronic medical records by 2015. Doctors would have to show competency in the technology for medical board registration.
Also, Massachusetts would be the first state to ban pharmaceutical marketing gifts. The bill would bar representatives of pharmaceutical companies from offering them and ban physicians from accepting gifts of any kind. The ban would extend to physicians’ staffs and family members.
Distribution of drug samples to doctors would be allowed, however.
Murray unveiled the bill today at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.
(AP)
As a former custodian of electronic medical records, I can tell you that adoption of this bill is a disaster waiting to happen. It is so very easy to change, add, delete, or edit these records at will even at the lowest levels of medical record retrieval.
Until electronic record keeping formulates a plan to prevent this activity, we must still retain paper records. Decisions in court cases often use medical records as a basis for their rulings. Electronic medical records, right now, can be warped, skewed, changed, or even forged because there is no "gatekeeper" to prevent unauthorized access.