Will Digital Technology Reduce Gap in Health between Rich and Poor?
The federal government is directing billions of dollars to get electronic health record technology into hospitals and clinics nationwide. Many people believe that electronic medical records will help improve the quality of health care by giving doctors more detailed data on their patients and allow physicians to better analyze data to understand what treatments work. Some doctors and small clinics, however, indicate their concerns, stating that the benefit of the technology may disproportionately fall to top health care facilities and increase the health gap between rich and poor. This leads to another big problem for the initiative: cost. Although the federal government is offering individual doctors approximately $44,000 apiece in economic stimulus money for using electronic health records, many doctors in small practices either don’t have enough money to pay for the systems up front, or says the stimulus money won’t even cover the purchase costs of all the necessary equipments.
Tell us what you think. Do the benefits of going digital in hospitals and health clinics outweigh the cost? Will digital technology reduce or increase the gap in health between the rich and poor?