The history of the EMR has demonstrated that ignoring the voice of the physician has costly ramifications. I hate to watch the government now make the same mistake developing the regulations for the EHR incentives.
Let’s look at how money has been wasted in the development of traditional EMRs. Vendors to this day are squandering precious resources to build complex—often overly complex—products, filled with features and functions that very few, if any, physicians actually use. To compound matters, the focus of software development has shifted away from innovative features that physicians dream of to cumbersome features that physicians don’t even want. This is what happens when a quasi-government entity (CCHIT), makes EHR decisions without strong representation from private-practicing physicians.
To recoup these significant development costs, vendors charge physicians steep prices for the software. It is the physicians who have paid the highest price—expensive EMR purchases that have too often resulted in failed implementations or de-installations. Those who have persevered and managed to make it up the learning curve have frequently incurred significant costs associated with reduced productivity during, and often well after, implementation. To add insult to injury, with the recent HIT Policy Committee’s (admittedly admirable) shift toward “Meaningful Use” as the driver of EHR certification, CCHIT has now established a workgroup to strip out the features that are no longer needed to meet the proposed requirements. Physicians have purchased software that they did not want or need, and now find that it was overkill.
We now have an opportunity to take the opposite approach if the government would listen closely to the voice of physicians and make sure that the software allows them to deliver care without encumbrances.
In the meantime, the physicians are left “holding the bag”…..and it’s not a Gucci!
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