Question

Discuss how moving from paper files to electronic files has created an extra cost to the healthcare system/consumer and also discuss burdens that have come about due to electronic files. Who should absorb the cost of requesting data for e-discovery; the tax payers, insurance providers, healthcare providers, the plaintiff, etc.? Why?

Answer 1

Development is a key factor for the growth of the nation . Changes in the existing system is mandatory to make use of the newly developed technologies and equipments . This transformation has to be done in every field . Digitalization is the main trend in today's world . Everyone wants everything to be available or done by a single click at their home itself in less time.

Healthcare sector is also developing day by day ,new equipments and techniques are developed to treat the patient more efficiently. As a part of digitalization ,the papers are converted to electronic files . Hospitals need separate software to maintain the electronic health record of the patients , different modules to run different departments , separate manpower to run and work on the system , finance for the maintainance of the system and software . All these segments need financial supply to function properly.

Due to the extra finances needed to function software properly, many of the hospitals are charging extra from the patients , and also the workload on healthcare staffs has been increased due to non recruitment of separate staffs for running software and systems. This lead to extra work of running system on the staffs who are already burdened with the ratio of patients which results in the consequences of ineffective provision of healthcare services to the patients.

Also the manpower and occupation of many people who earlier worked to maintain the paper files are now unemployed as they don't know to run the system .

Maintaining electronic file is not easy because there are many chances of leakage and hacking of patient data . Using a well established software is very important to record the patients health information. It should provide privacy , security to the patients health information . The software should be licensed under HIPAA.

The cost of requesting data for e-discovery should be absorbed by tax payers because e-discovery is one of the initiative of digitalization . Digitalization as a whole was established for the growth and development of nation. These facilities are used by the people of nation, so a part from the tax which they pay every year should be used to run the e discovery and tax is paid by every individual of the nation ,no one is excluded everyone will pay indirectly to the government and government will provide this financial support to the health care industry to run the electronic patient records , further more patients does not have to pay extra for e-discovery and also the burden on the staffs is relieved because of the recruitment of separate staff for functioning the system .