Both in my office and in the general population, people are getting fatter and they don’t exercise. Personally, I don’t think it will help much. In chronic diseases like asthma and hypertension, perhaps monitoring will help a small segment of the population who will take the time and effort to monitor their disease at home, get the information uploaded and share it with their physicians. This is a question that will take 20 years to answer. What about immunizations? Perhaps they will help get more people immunized because doctors and nurses will ask and then recommend the procedures. This leads to anxiety, further testing, therapy, doctor visits and a big waste of resources. More testing leads to more false positives, i.e., the test is abnormal when it shouldn’t be.
Prostate cancer screening has drawn similar conclusions in terms of lives saved. A recent task force came out and said there is no survival benefit until the age of 50. This is a big “possible.” Screening guidelines suggest women start getting mammograms by the age of 40. How can a medical record make people live longer? In theory, if screening tests are done as recommended by numerous medical societies, there would be an overall population survival benefit. Does any system that is put into place make people live longer, better and for how much money? I am a physician and I think electronic medical records in a private office fail on both counts.įirst, do they make people live longer? I doubt it. The most important issues with any system of health care today are money and health.
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