I just caught a blog post by the indefatigable Fred Trotter (a high-profile Open Source guy focused on HIT) which raised an important issue.  In his article, Trotter argues credibly that once a healthcare organization implements an EMR, its records are more or less incompatible with standard paper records.

Trotter cites the troubling case of two primary care groups which, despite the using same major EMR system, can only share data by printing out massive paper transcripts of a patient’s electronic record.

Apparently, each have a custom version of the system in place, which means that the two groups couldn’t share data directly. So when a patient from Practice A moves to Practice B, Practice A’s only option is to generate what — from a photo included in the article  – looks like thousands of pages of data.

Not only are such paper printouts awkward to store and manage, they’re painfully difficult to use. While traditional handwritten records provide a familiar, and relatively concise, source of medical data, this blizzard of paper could actually bury critical information.

After all, while the data might make sense when access via the EMR’s digital templates, doctors may not know where to find what they’re looking for when confronted with the print equivalent of a massive Excel spreadsheet.

Not only that, when Practice B scans this paper monster into its system, the problem just gets worse. When caring for the patient, B’s doctors will doubtless begin entering data into their own EMR system, piling structured data on top of incompatible scanned data. How clinicians will figure out what’s up with the patient is a mystery to me.

As commentors to Trotter’s item noted, the two practices could probably have shared a summary in Continuity of Care Document format. However, unless practices are willing to make do with a summary over the long term, they’re likely to confront paper printouts for quite some time.  Not a pretty picture, is it?

I’ll admit beforehand that I’m a member of the Fred Trotter fan club. He’s a little bit psycho when it comes to open source licensing and the like, but that’s probably why I love him so much. When he truly believes in something he’s fully engaged in that cause.

So, of course I am completely interested in Fred Trotter’s blog post about CONNECT where he said the following:

The right conversation starts with this: we can assume that CONNECT -will- unify the health information transfer in the US. It will serve as the basis for the core NHIN and regional networks will have the option of implementing it. That means that CONNECT sets the bar for health exchange. Software must be as good as CONNECT to be considered for a local Health Information Exchange, otherwise, why not use CONNECT?

I think this is the second time that I’ve heard the name of the project CONNECT like this. I think that’s a sign that I better do some more looking into this project.