Google Getting In On EMR's

Powerhouse internet website "Google" has reached an agreement with Practice Fusions which is a company that specializes in web based EMR software. The long and short of the agreement is that the EMR software will be free and financed by Google ads. This is likely to be very beneficial for smaller practices as the transition from going from the old paper records in their office to electronic records generates a steep upfront cost. With this agreement with Practice Fusion there will be no licensing fee or charges for hosting. The company even has a blog which is updated to help smaller and even bigger facilities with ideas how to change from a paper office to an "e-office". Google has assured that they will not have access to the information on these records insuring privacy. The ads that will fund this free EMR service provided by Practice Fusions will largely from different prescription drug companies, hospitals, and doctor's offices. There are several companies that exist currently that provide high tech EMR software that provide physician to physician contact as well as patient to physician contact in ways never before imagined. The problem however is that almost all of these companies are in the business of making money and charge a large sum of money for their software. Perhaps with this recent development of Google forming an agreement with Practice Fusion we may see a lot more smaller less financially powerful practices able to convert their offices to electronic medical records.

Road Blocks to Converting to Electronic Medical Records

What is medical identity theft? Why would someone want to steal my medical identity? Stealing one's medical identity is simply taking one's medical history including prescriptions so as to use the history to get surgeries or drugs they would otherwise be unable to get if not insured. So why then would electronic medical records have any effect on the number of medical identity thefts? Experts think it will become even easier for those people to get individuals records online or hack into data bases of medical facilites to get the records they want. Currently of all identity theft, medical identity only accounts for about 3% of all identity theft, but experts think that number will rise dramatically with the creation of electronic medical records.
We can obviously see the great importance of having a very strong firewall and taking every precaution necessary to ensure the privacy of these medical records. Perhaps a more startling and bigger problem however is that there seems to be a growing trend in the number of "inside" jobs of medical identity theft. Workers in health care facilities helping friends/ families file false insurance claims using the records of other people. One particular case showed a worker help a cousin receive close to $3 million dollars in false claims. So as we move toward a future of electronic medical records one of the great obstacles we need to overcome is to ensure privacy and safety of these records so that it truly does not the American person money instead of causing heartache, headache, and finincial perrils.