Physician outcry on EHR functionality, cost will shake the health information technology sector
By Daniel R. Verdon
Medical Economics, February 10, 2014
Despite the government’s bribe of nearly $27 billion to digitize patient records, nearly 70% of physicians say electronic health record (EHR) systems have not been worth it. It’s a sobering statistic backed by newly released data from marketing and research firm MPI Group and Medical Economics that suggest nearly two-thirds of doctors would not purchase their current EHR system again because of poor functionality and high costs.
* Nearly 45% of physicians from the national survey report spending more than $100,000 on an EHR.
* Nearly 79% of respondents in practices with more than 10 physicians said their EHR investment was not worth the effort, resources and cost.
* 73% of the largest practices would not purchase their current EHR system. The data show that 66% of internal medicine specialists would not purchase their current system. About 60% of respondents in family medicine would also make another EHR choice.
* 67% of physicians dislike the functionality of their EHR systems.
* 45% of respondents say patient care is worse since implementing an EHR.
* 65% of respondents say their EHR systems result in financial losses for the practice.
* About 69% of respondents said that coordination of care with hospitals has not improved.
The national survey underscores the major disconnect between the current state of EHR software and the needs of physicians.
http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics/news/physician-outcry-ehr-functionality-cost-will-shake-health-information-technol
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
Congress keeps coming up with schemes to try to control health care costs. Establishing financial incentives for electronic health records (EHRs) appears to be just one more example where Congress has again fallen short, based on this report of physician outcry over EHR functionality and costs.
It’s too bad. Members of Congress have before them a model that has been proven to be effective in controlling costs – a single payer national health program or “Improved Medicare for All.” If we had such a system in place then other improvements such as a health information technology system (HIT) could be developed in a coordinated manner that would better serve patients and their physicians.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology was established under President George W. Bush, but existed primarily to only encourage the private sector to work together to coordinate their systems. That is asking a lot of competitors that each want to have the dominant system in the market while making sure that competitors’ systems would not be compatible, so they could have the whole thing. The profit incentives in the private, fragmented EHR marketplace are considerably different from the patient care incentives that led to the successful VistA EHRs for the VA Health system – a concept developed by the National Center for Health Services Research and Development of the U.S. Public Health Service (now AHRQ).
Some may cite the boondoggle with the startup of the ACA insurance exchanges as an example of the incompetence of the government in such matters, but it was the government’s reliance on the private sector that resulted in the problems that we saw and are still seeing. Congress should enact a single payer system now so that we’ll have something to work with for the betterment of efficient patient care.