A recent survey conducted by health IT vendor athenahealth and Sermo, an online physician community, painted a pretty grim picture of how physicians are feeling about the future of medicine. The survey involving 1,000 physicians point to discontent from the quality of healthcare delivery to the burden of payer administration and reimbursement.
Against that background, the numbers surrounding EHRs are somewhat better. Eighty-one percent of physicians held a very favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of EHRs.
It didn't say that the survey was Internet based, but I'm guessing that it was. I'm also guessing that the physicians athenahealth and Sermo reached out to are likely regular Internet-using physicians. I'll wager a good number of them have EHRs already. So it should be no surprise that EHRs rated so favorably in this physician index.
Only 51 percent of physicians said that EHRs are designed with them in mind. When I hear of complaints about design flaws, I scratch my head. What EHR vendor doesn't have a C-level medical doctor on the leadership team and clinicians on the development team? Why is there such a disconnect? Could it simply be that physician workflow is so unique from office to office? Is there a lot of differentiation among EHRs that physicians would have a choice as to which best fits their office and physician workflow?
So, 54 percent said that EHRs slow them down during patient exams. Any new change would. It’s a given. You have to adjust, with the understanding that in the end you should be more efficient and should have more actionable information to assist in clinical decisions. It's a matter of education, training and re-engineering of the physician office. This re-engineering should be shared by office and vendor, or office and consultant.
Sixty percent said EHRs distracted from face-to-face interaction with patients. Again, this is a matter of adjusting to the third entity in the examining room. One hopes all this training and re-engineering is part of all EHR packages; it makes business sense.
Lastly, only five percent of physicians felt that EHRs are alleviating the effort to stay on top of changing payment requirements and incentives. One day EHRs and practice management systems will be integrated in the physician office. When that happens, clinical processes and data will merge with financial and administrative processes and data, resulting ideally in a well-oiled machine.
Patty Enrado blogs daily at EHRWatch.com.
