Beep, beep, beep, errrrkkkk.
That screeching noise is the chorus of overwhelmed fax machines in Harris County and beyond receiving thousands of pages of COVID-19 test results. You ask: What’s a fax machines? It’s that bulky appliance stuck in your parents’ basement and office storage closets.
However, health departments across the country are relying on the decades-old fax machine to help track the spread of the coronavirus.
To the surprise of no one with some gray in their hair, those fax machines are consistently failing to perform. Also, results have been faxed to the wrong locations. This adds an extra task to the already full plate of overworked officials to ensure that the records end up in the right location. Papers are piling up in offices, and while you could argue that it’s good that at least some use is being made of empty office space these days, we think it would be wise for doctors and health departments to finally make the transition to modern technology.
In 2009, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a bill that provided incentives for doctors and hospitals to switch over to electronic health records. Making this transition is costly for medical facilities, but it proves to be a cost-effective plan in the long term. More importantly, it improves the quality of care for patients. The Obama administration saw a serious uptick in the adoption of electronic health records between 2008 to 2012: The number of office-based physicians moving files online doubled, while the number of hospitals taking the same action quadrupled. Yet, here we are in 2020 with paper records still around, and our country suffering for it.
Where are all the printers with the neat feature that allows someone to scan something and send it via email? Where are the tablets and the smartphones loaded with software that enables health care providers to view patient records from wherever they are? All you skeptics out there argue “Online servers crash!” Yes, this is true. “Electronic records sent through email need to be encrypted due to HIPAA!” Valid point. “Training employees to use new software is tedious and time-consuming, and the transition itself is costly!” Right again. But if we are going to slow the spread of the virus, we can’t have employees knee-deep in paper records, limiting their ability to share information quickly.
National Guardsmen should not spend their valuable time and efforts manually entering data for health departments. Health departments should not be missing vital records during a pandemic. It is time for medical professionals and state officials to move their two feet stuck in the past to the present by spending the coin to get rid of fax machines once and for all and transition to online.
We don’t need any more excuses or complications in a time like this.
