Niam Yaraghi, of the Brookings Institution, denounces EHR vendors:
He notes that the “the next step forward {in pushing EHR’s} is to connect these electronic silos together so that physicians can share their patients’ records. The billions of dollars in federal spending will only have any tangible benefit if this is done successfully. EHR vendors have taken patient data hostage and are not willing to release it unless they receive a big ransom. They typically claim that technical problems limit the interoperability of their products. This prevents physicians from sharing their patient records with other doctors. This is like T-Mobile claiming that its users cannot make calls to AT&T customers. The claimed interoperability limitation does not end here. The vendors are proposing hefty charges to allow data sharing between their own customers.”
