An article in today's NY Times points out that when it comes to electronic health records we have far to go despite the benefits.
Here's an excerpt:
A government-sponsored survey of the use of computerized patient records by doctors points to two seemingly contradictory conclusions, and a health care system at odds with itself.
Robert Spencer for The New York Times
Dr. Peter Masucci, a pediatrician in Massachusetts, said shifting to computerized records helped improve his patient care.
The report, published online on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that doctors who use electronic health records say overwhelmingly that such records have helped improve the quality and timeliness of care. Yet fewer than one in five of the nation’s doctors has started using such records.Bringing patient records into the computer age, experts say, is crucial to improving care, reducing errors and containing costs in the American health care system. The slow adoption of the technology is mainly economic. Most doctors in private practice, especially those in small practices, lack the financial incentive to invest in computerized records.
The national survey found that electronic records were used in less than 9 percent of small offices with one to three doctors, where nearly half of the country’s doctors practice medicine.
You can see the full article here.
Todays uptick on EHR usage is about 17% and moving up. The big item is most Medical Schools have moved to EHR's. Second, multiple doctor offices are usually the first to adopt EHR's.
The main problems are: when first adopting EHR's your patient volume will go down as you learn the system. It takes a year of collecting information before the real benefits are recognized. Finally, if a doctor is selling his business the patient records are his asset and he/she likes to see the physical presence of their assets and they want to keep them in their office not at some remote site.
Now those offices that have moved into EHR's, get paid quicker, and usually more and can reduce their back office staff and these positives are starting to move into the industry.
And remember this is an industry that lives by the motto "Never be the first and never be the last"
Bill A.