Shining a little light and a little heat on the issue of EHRs and fraud

This is a review of the 2013 article, “Shining a little light and a little heat on the issue of EHRs and Fraud.” by Donald W. Simborg.

Introduction

September 2012 brought about a week of unwanted spotlight attention to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and fraud. The cause for unwanted attention, the increases in billing upon health systems switch to EHRs, which brought about a lot of speculation and opinion based finger pointing. With all the commotion brought about during this week, neither our informatics community leadership nor our current administration gave more than a blink of an eye to the uproar and concern of EHR fraud. Typical responses were handed out from leadership that if there is fraud, it is not the fault of the EHRs but rather a tiny minority of criminals, and a warning from the current administration that fraud would not be tolerated.