> And in most cases it is done hours or days later, not immediately at the point of care where the doctor is expected to make a diagnosis and decide on the course of treatment.

So does that mean it's not important to the doctor's job? Or would having this information right away allow doctors to do their jobs better? If so, why isn't it done that way right now?

Here is a list of the most common diagnoses from a few years ago. http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/natstats/commdx/table2a.... Doctors already do quite well diagnosing those in almost all cases so there isn't much room to improve on the diagnostic side. Once the doctor takes the patient history, observes the symptoms, and reviews the lab results then the diagnosis is usually fairly obvious (to an experienced professional). If the doctor had to enter all her detailed observations into a computer it would just slow the process down and increase costs.

> If the doctor had to enter all her detailed observations into a computer it would just slow the process down and increase costs.

On the other hand, paying someone working for/requiring much less money/training than the doctor (say, a BS & $20 or $30/hour) to enter the data would lower the overall costs, would it not?

No that really wouldn't lower overall costs because it wouldn't immediately add much value in most cases. There would be some long term value later since that additional coded clinical data could be mined for clinical research to determine which treatments are most effective. But no one is willing to pay an additional $10 (or whatever) per patient encounter to get that data.

If there wasn't so much bureaucratic red tape surrounding the healthcare industry, that would be a great opportunity for an enterpreneur. Correcting the smallest inefficiencies can dramatically increase profit.