eSurgery? Or Operating with Big Brother?

Newt Gingrich was once the architect of the 1996 Republican Revolution which swept majorities into both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the midst of the Bill Clinton adminstration, has since fallen from grace due to marital infidelity which uncovered his hypocrisy at the height of the Monica Lewinsky mess. However, before Newt was a congressional leader, before he had been spun by his enemies as the epitomy of evil, he was an extremely incisive analyst. Anyone who has listened to excerpts from his course Renewing American Civilization knows his is a mind to be reckoned with.



Now, Mr. Gingrich has written an article for the New York Times calling for a public-private initiative to bring medical records into the twentieth century by making them all electronic. Having just come out of the hospital for surgery for a herniated disk, these kinds of issues are very much on my mind.

The archaic information systems of our hospitals and clinics directly affect the quality of care we receive. When you go to a new doctor, the office most likely has little information about you, no ability to track how other providers are treating you, and no systematic way to keep up with scientific breakthroughs that might help you.



The results are predictable. For example, approximately 20 percent of medical tests are ordered a second time simply because previous results can't be found. Research shows that 30 cents of every dollar spent on health care does nothing to make sick people better. That's $7.4 trillion over the next decade for duplicate tests, preventable errors, unnecessary hospitalizations and other waste.

At the same time, we must keep in mind that electronic information is information easily accessed, duplicated, and pirated by interested parties. Do we want our insurance companies second-guessing every decision of our doctors? Do we want police to be able to pull up our complete medical histories on a whim, without the effort that a full search warrant requires? Do we want our medical histories potentially stolen and posted on a peer-to-peer network for all the world to see?



As always, electronic encoding offers equal helpings of advantage and risk.