Electronic records upping Medicare costs?

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NEW YORK, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Medicare costs appear to be rising sharply in the United States as doctors switch to using electronic medical records, The New York Times says.

Electronic record-keeping had been touted as a means to cut healthcare costs. The newspaper reported Friday its analysis of figures from the American Hospital Directory showed Medicare billing by hospitals increased by $1 billion between 2005 and 2010.

Regulators said doctors' billings for Medicare services went up by billions of dollars in the same period.

Federal regulators said a handful of doctors appear to be responsible for a disproportionate share of the additional billing.

A report said 1,700 doctors out of a total of 440,000 billed Medicare for $100 million in services.

In some cases, hospitals appear to have changed billing codes, the Times said.

The newspaper found several instances in which the proportion of emergency room patients receiving high levels of treatment jumped when a hospital began using an electronic records system.

Two hospitals -- Faxton St. Luke's Healthcare in Utica, N.Y., and Baptist Hospital in Nashville -- told the Times that was because their records are now more accurate.

Electronic systems appear to make it easier in a number of ways to perpetrate fraud, the Times said. For example, doctors can cut and paste findings from one patient's records into those of several other patients.