$100 million to convert hospital records

[Amati]

From the SB breaking news (so the link won't work for long):

The board of the state public hospital system known as Hawaii Health Systems Corp. has ousted its chief executive Bruce Anderson.

HHSC also has faced scrutiny because the cost to convert to electronic medical records at its 14 public hospitals will likely exceed $100 million over five years, nearly double earlier projections.

[Please note, this question is about the cost of the conversion, not placing the blame upon the shoulders of just one person (the ousted CEO).]

How can that be, $100 million for 14 hospitals? Especially when it is assumable that there is just ONE main program that needs to be developed which can be used at all 14 facilities.

[GregLee]

Re: $100 million to convert hospital records

How can that be, $100 million for 14 hospitals? Especially when it is assumable that there is just ONE main program that needs to be developed which can be used at all 14 facilities.

It's not just a single program, but a system. I have no specific knowledge of the matter, but I'd think converting data of various sorts (text, instrument records and images), providing peripheral access to medical personnel in and out of hospital, means of data entry, training, and a bunch of other things that I don't know enough to list, could eat up quite a lot of money.

I was in and out of Castle Medical Center while they were updating their computer records system, a few years ago. They use computers a lot. The nurses stations are an array of computer terminals, I always see doctors there working away at the records, there are portable data stations that are wheeled from patient room to patient room -- looks like mountains of data to manage (reliably and quickly, if they want patients to survive).

[Kaonohi]

Re: $100 million to convert hospital records

Kaiser is now 100% digital, as far as I know.

[lensperson]

Re: $100 million to convert hospital records

The cost to migrate these medical data bases are much larger than
a typical data system migration or ghosting.

Legal standards impose higher levels of privacy as regards transmission of

personal medical data.

If not , a lot more Doctors would be subject to various lawsuits.

I hope the NSA keeps a copy for us peasants.