Bad handwriting can kill you

Are you ready for this? I agree with President Bush on something! (GASP!)

I'm thankful that President Bush has continued the work of previous presidents to restructure our nation's health records systems. He is doing something other than blaming lawyers for our health care problems, so my apologies to Republicans everywhere for implying that his limited focus of health care issues in mainstream discussions means that he’s not doing anything else to address other health care problems.

The Institute of Medicine, the Dept. of Health and Human Services, and others have performed many studies on the state of health records and the impact that written records and filing systems have on our health outcomes. The IOM put together an interesting fact sheet about this and the Secretary of HHS has some interesting comments about medical errors. I’m glad to see that the my concern with depending on medical doctors’ handwriting for passing along critical information is justified.

I’m writing a grant with a non-profit organization to plan the development of an interoperable, electronic health records system in Ohio. LOTS of money is being spent across the nation on such projects. If you want more information, let me know and I’ll throw out more sources.