This is an interesting review article in US-based Managed Care Magazine outlining some of the challenges facing the adoption of EMR in physician's offices.
False alarms, dashed hopes
"We've already seen a tremendous impact," says Molly Coye, MD, CEO and founder of the Health Technology Center. "A significant number of influential leaders now believe this change is really going to happen after many false alarms and disappointed hopes."
But not everyone is so bullish when it comes to making the huge leap from political talking point to the immensely costly reality of wiring the traditional paper health care system.
Quite a few consultants and market analysts aren't ready to join the victory march. They say these initial moves add up to little more than a light financial tonic for a system that needs a hard jolt of revised compensation systems to bring it into the digital age. Some of the largest private insurers, essential to achieving general adoption, haven't been drawn in. And there is a fundamental disconnect between the way many of the champions of EMRs calculate industrywide savings and how providers do the math on the dollars that can be gained — or lost — by a technological makeover. The sum cost of these systems still adds up to more than the net savings they can reliably produce within years of adoption. And without a dependable ROI on the horizon, there can be no widespread enthusiasm about EMRs.
"I want to applaud the federal government in wanting to put a focus on health care IT," says Barry Hieb, MD, a research director for the influential market research firm Gartner. "It's long overdue. But clearly the stuff put out to date is pretty early and not terribly convincing in terms of affecting significant change. If it's going to have an impact, it's got to get into the private sector. And really, they haven't outlined a strategy that does that."
Just compare our efforts, critics say, to the U.K., where the government's adoption of a similar goal of universal electronic records is being driven by a single-payer system funded with more than $10 billion in government contracts and enforced by mandated standards that will allow all providers to tap into a central repository of digital records (see "U.K. Gets Serious ..." on page 19). Many say that the U.S. is pursuing a bottom-up approach that guarantees years more of conflicting systems — which maintain islands of digital information that are inaccessible to every other system — and prohibitively high failure rates for physicians who bail out of expensive systems when they don't work, who lose interest, or who just fail to maintain them.
This is an interesting review article in US-based Managed Care Magazine outlining some of the challenges facing the adoption of EMR in physician's offices.
False alarms, dashed hopes
"We've already seen a tremendous impact," says Molly Coye, MD, CEO and founder of the Health Technology Center. "A significant number of influential leaders now believe this change is really going to happen after many false alarms and disappointed hopes."
But not everyone is so bullish when it comes to making the huge leap from political talking point to the immensely costly reality of wiring the traditional paper health care system.
Quite a few consultants and market analysts aren't ready to join the victory march. They say these initial moves add up to little more than a light financial tonic for a system that needs a hard jolt of revised compensation systems to bring it into the digital age. Some of the largest private insurers, essential to achieving general adoption, haven't been drawn in. And there is a fundamental disconnect between the way many of the champions of EMRs calculate industrywide savings and how providers do the math on the dollars that can be gained — or lost — by a technological makeover. The sum cost of these systems still adds up to more than the net savings they can reliably produce within years of adoption. And without a dependable ROI on the horizon, there can be no widespread enthusiasm about EMRs.
"I want to applaud the federal government in wanting to put a focus on health care IT," says Barry Hieb, MD, a research director for the influential market research firm Gartner. "It's long overdue. But clearly the stuff put out to date is pretty early and not terribly convincing in terms of affecting significant change. If it's going to have an impact, it's got to get into the private sector. And really, they haven't outlined a strategy that does that."
Just compare our efforts, critics say, to the U.K., where the government's adoption of a similar goal of universal electronic records is being driven by a single-payer system funded with more than $10 billion in government contracts and enforced by mandated standards that will allow all providers to tap into a central repository of digital records (see "U.K. Gets Serious ..." on page 19). Many say that the U.S. is pursuing a bottom-up approach that guarantees years more of conflicting systems — which maintain islands of digital information that are inaccessible to every other system — and prohibitively high failure rates for physicians who bail out of expensive systems when they don't work, who lose interest, or who just fail to maintain them.
Link: 2004_11 | Electronic Medical Records: High Hopes Meet Harsh Reality.
To comment on this article, click on the 'Comments' link below