Unintended Consequences?

Promoted by the Bush and Obama administrations as a cost-cutting measure, have electronic patient records actually led to increased healthcare costs?

According to an analysis by the New York Times, the push to streamline patient record keeping through federal subsidies for electronic records systems may end up increasing costs to Medicare.  The federal government has provided billions of dollars to hospitals to upgrade to the new electronic systems, in hopes of "improv[ing] efficiency and patient safety", in addition to reducing healthcare costs due to misdiagnosis and duplicate medical tests.

However, several doctors and healthcare experts interviewed by the Times say that the new systems make it easier for hospitals to "upcode", an industry term for defrauding Medicare by using medical codes for care that was never received by the patient.

The Times article quotes a Health and Human Services Department spokesperson stating that Medicare "has strong protections in place to prevent fraud."

Update:  The federal government has responded to the original story, sending a stern letter to hospitals discouraging the "gaming" of the system described above.