Kaiser's Costly Improvement

Kaiser reported this week that they have completed implementation of their Electronic Health Record (EHR)system with all of their 8.1 million members in 9 states. They call their EHR "Health Connect" and over 13,000 physicians and medical professionals can access data about members at any time. I applaud this effort and encourage other health systems to do the same. It only cost Kaiser 4 billion dollars to implement and 1 billion per year to maintain.

Couple of issues...only 13 of the 36 hospitals have adopted this technology at this point. Seems to me that the most important part of access is the hospital access. It is at the time of an emergency that most medical professionals need to know what the history has been. It's great to see that on a routine basis that you may have missed your mammogram but the Kaiser ER doctor who is about to give you medication that you are deathly allergic too really needs that information immediately. Also, the information is not transferable. For example, I have clients that have moved their health plan to another insurance carrier. Kaiser at this point will not allow you to download or keep your EHR to be able to give to another medical professional or personal EHR system. I find that to be insulting. My information is my information. Why does Kaiser feel that they "own it". I know that they want to keep members at all costs, but this is ridiculous.

While prescriptions are getting more efficient with this system and it might generate some savings, the cost for maintaining it seems a bit high compared to what they might save. With quarterly earnings down and membership in key areas low, look for another round of significant rate increases in the next 12-18 months. The money has to come from somewhere.