Doctors are great scientist but many are lacking when it comes to business acumen. It is actually kind of amazing that in a profession where so much is made of taking care of yourself now to prevent problems later in life, the same approach is not taken when it comes to running a business.
Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2011
The reasons for not adopting electronic medical records are pretty straightforward: those on the sidelines think the systems are expensive, that they won’t produce a return on investment and that they’ll cut productivity even after they’re fully implemented.
So finds a new survey, conducted by the Medical Group Management Association and covering 4,588 health-care organizations, including independent practices, hospitals, integrated systems and others. Some groups were still using paper records and others reported being at various stages of implementing electronic ones.
Among those using paper charts, 78% believed there would be a “significant to very significant” loss of productivity during the switchover to an electronic system, and 67% believed productivity would be lost even after implementation. Almost 72% cited a plain old lack of cash as a barrier to digitizing records, and 57% said they didn’t believe there’d be a return on the investment.
(A separate survey released in February found growing skepticism among physicians about the financial and other benefits of EMRs.)
Among those who’d adopted electronic records, those who considered the systems up and running to their best capability were more satisfied than those still optimizing their use.
One interesting tidbit: of those groups using electronic records, 53% said they either “mildly” or “severely” underestimated the time needed to train people to use the systems. The WSJ recently reported on the challenges of training physicians and other care givers to use newly purchased electronic medical record systems.
Among the comments, some from physicians, received by MGMA: “Doctors felt like they didn’t need much training … However, when they went live they wished they had trained for more scenarios.”
As with all technology, cost will eventually go down over time and more people will adopt these systems. I just wish the future was now.