The case against EMRs

January 29, 2010 by MassDevice

By Brandon Glenn, MedCity News
Why don't more doctors don’t use electronic medical records systems? After all, information technology has helped most industries increase efficiency; wouldn’t it do the same for health care if doctors would just follow suit? (A widely cited article from the New England Journal of Medicine from 2008 found that only about 13 percent of doctors use EMRs.) For anyone who’s ever wondered why those numbers are so low, a blog post at HospitalImpact by Dr. Robert Teague is worth a read.

Most software is designed with the key end-users in mind (in this case, that would be physicians). But EMR systems generally are not. EMRs were designed to be back-office automation tools. That is, they’re supposed to facilitate billing between medical practices and insurance companies. And although many of them do that well, EMR systems don’t actually help doctors do their jobs. If they did, doctors would use them. Until that happens, don’t expect doctors to rush out and spend tens of thousands of dollars on the software, even if they get government incentives to do so:

I have long contended that if an EMR delivered value to clinicians in performing their work, cost would not be an issue, much less adoptive resistance. Connectivity to all needed clinical data and among all parties involved, a user interface that supports the clinical task, and automation of data collection, analysis and process flows will go a long way toward enhancing the value proposition.

Saying he wants "the 'iPhone' of EMRs," Teague writes that clinicians might stand in line to buy an EMR system with "a value proposition that is so compelling that the price, while important, doesn't drive the ultimate decision:"

Hey, wait! It might be an iPhone.

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