Politics & Government
Another Delay in Getting Electronic Health Records to First Responders
Bankruptcy of software supplier just the latest roadblock in five-year plan to equip EMS units with potentially life-saving medical data.
While emergency medical services would seem to be an area where instant access to health records would be critically important, implementing such a scheme has proven difficult. An attempt to institute a statewide system five years ago has met with numerous obstacles and now seems to be back to square one.
When the state contracted in 2008 with emsCharts, a Pittsburgh-based software supplier, to offer all EMS providers access to electronic health records, officials had high hopes that the data would soon be available to paramedics and other EMS workers across the state.
With six months left on the contract, however, emsCharts has declared bankruptcy. Some 37 percent of EMS organizations have adopted the software program, and state officials are reviewing where to go from here.
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Sen. Linda R. Greenstein (D-Mercer and Middlesex) raised the issue with state Health Commissioner Mary E. O’Dowd at a Senate budget hearing yesterday, questioning what the state plans to do when the emsCharts contract expires on October 31. She noted that state budget documents left it unclear whether the program would continue to be funded.
Greenstein said that she would like to see all EMS providers have access to the records.
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“In an ideal world it would seem to be a very good system for all EMS organizations to be participating in,” she said after the hearing.
While the emsCharts system was touted as being free to EMS units in 2008, O'Dowd said local providers wound up having to make an "investment" to implement it. In addition, “five years is a long time in terms of technology,” she said.
“We have to evaluate what is our best next step moving forward,” O’Dowd said.
Every EMS provider varies in both how advanced their computers are and how compatible they are with the electronic records kept by local hospitals.
“It may or may not be something that the department can solve, and we are certainly trying to have a very thoughtful conversation internally,” the commissioner said.
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