Re “Your E-Health Records” (editorial, Feb. 1):
While it’s true that patient privacy and prurient commercial objectives can disastrously collide in electronic health records, the specter of doom camouflages other issues that demand consideration.
What about the outrageous cost of our health care system and the 45 million uninsured Americans? And the foreclosures and bankruptcy caused by medical bills? And let’s not forget that an estimated 100,000 lives are lost each year because of medical errors, and that there are large discrepancies in access to quality care across economic and geographic strata.
Electronic health records and patient privacy are not mutually exclusive. We cannot let concerns about privacy morph into paralysis. The stimulus package’s financing for electronic records will bring us technology innovation and job creation, better-educated patients, improved health outcomes and advances toward affordable personalized medicine.
Brent Gendleman
Reston, Va., Feb. 3, 2009
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