Electronic health records are still inadequate, council finds
The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a report Wednesday calling on the Obama administration to develop a more efficient electronic healthcare records system.
The report, “Realizing the Full Potential of Health Information Technology to Improve Healthcare for Americans: The Path Forward,” acknowledges that while the stimulus bill gave $27 billion to build such systems, up to 80% of doctors lack even the most basic access to such records.
“Where electronic records do exist, they are typically limited in functionality and poor in interoperability,” the report said. “As a result, the ability to integrate electronic health information about a patient and exchange it among clinical providers remains the exception rather than the rule.”
PCAST urged the federal government to develop within a year a set of metrics to measure progress toward an operational, universal and national health IT infrastructure.
