Kaiser and their electronic system

This is an interesting article about how Kaiser instituted their electronic medical record system.

I had written a previous post about this subject and still think it's a great idea, although possibly prohibitively expensive. However, one argument is that electronic records could eventually lead to cost -savings- as medical tests and studies are not unnecessarily repeated. Interestingly enough, the article says that the costs savings aren't really there as people are living longer with better care, and thus require more health care resources in the end, which off-set the potential savings in medical costs. Nevertheless, the article does point out that shared electronic medical records lead to better care and for that reason, it's still worth it to attempt implementation of these systems in all hospitals. Hopefully they will all eventually even be compatible with each other, if not already part of a common universal electronic medical record keeping system.