Chris Murphy: “What the President has proposed here is to make some changes to entice hospitals throughout the Nation and from medical…”

“What the President has proposed here is to make some changes to entice hospitals throughout the Nation and from medical practice to go towards electronic medical records. Let me try and describe that for our colleagues. This is a system which could be kept in place within the hospital itself, so that, any time a physician needed to access, or any medical provider within that hospital network, needed to access the patient's file, they could call upon this. Think about all the times you have been to see the doctor and you have to fill in the history sheet all over again and your address. You hope you remember all the places you have gone and all of the medication you have been on and all the illnesses you have had, but chances are, for the most part, a person cannot. In fact, some studies have looked at that, just looking at some of the paper charts that occur, that there are omissions and doctors acknowledge that because there are omissions in there, if they had further information, they would have made some different recommendations for tests, for diagnoses and that, in turns, saves money. Electronic medical records are a way of keeping this.”