Amid the rash of studies the last few months about the inability of EHRs to deliver the goods comes a welcomed report by KLAS. Eighty-five percent of healthcare providers who responded to KLAS' survey believe their ambulatory EMRs will help them meet for the 2011 deadlines per the meaningful use criteria that were proposed in July.
KLAS surveyed 1,400 providers about 26 EMR vendors. Of the respondents who said their EMR will enable them to meet the proposed federal requirements, athenahealth, Epic and NextGen customers expressed the most confidence. Amazing Charts and SRSoft customers expressed the least confidence. Interesting stat.
I'm interested in knowing how long these providers have had their systems deployed. You'd expect that the longer the EMRs have been in place, the more time the providers would have had to work through various issues and get full functionality out of the EMRs. (This is not all true, of course, if you read the rest of the survey results.) Still, early adopters are in a position of strength where meeting requirements are concerned. I believe the providers coming on board now can play catch up with the next-generation, more-nimble solutions out in the market today.
Now for the part of the survey that requires a bit of work to be done. Survey participants said that a number of functions are lacking in EMRs, the following of which are the most critical: reporting, patient access to medical records and key clinical data exchange. These functionalities are included in the proposed regulations. The KLAS report noted that 17 percent of providers said reporting is difficult or impossible with their current systems. Another 24 percent said they need specific technical expertise to extract those functionalities from their systems.
To me, this screams of EMR vendors needing to add those functionalities or tweak the systems so users can extract the functionalities on their own, without additional resources and cost. As we approach the finalization of the meaningful use criteria, the certifying bodies will adjust their criteria, and that will help nudge the market in this direction. The vendors who have guaranteed that their clients will qualify for the incentive will make the adjustment. The rest of the market must follow.
