Christine Bechtel, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families and member of the federal health IT policy committee, testified at a recent Committee on Ways and Means hearing.
She told reporters afterwards that the talk about health IT and meaningful use should revolve around the patient. In other words, technology is the enabler to higher quality of care for the patient.
With all the focus around implementing EHRs and deriving meaningful use out of the systems, it's easy to lose sight of the overall common goal, which is all efforts should be to create a healthcare system that delivers better clinical outcomes and eliminates waste.
If we keep to that mindset, EHR adoption should spread more rapidly, especially if providers also look at the massive transformation in patient-centric terms.
It's a good reminder for health IT vendors, as well. Federal funding aside, the whole federal and industry movement is to improve care. While the meaningful use criteria should serve as a sort of checklist for product functionality, EHRs and EMRs should be intuitive for the clinicians in order to drive adoption. Workflow and ease of use are part and parcel to product functionality.
Bechtel's testimony was for the hearing, but health IT advocates should carry her message out to the general public. If patients understand the value of EHRs - not that the government is going to post your medical records online, as some comments to blogs have wrongly accused - they will demand that their physicians and hospitals implement EHRs. Consumers can help drive adoption when they are appropriately educated as to the benefits, and the potential risks, of having an EHR.
Another point Bechtel made is that advocates should not just focus on automation of paper. Efficiency is great, but we need to talk to consumers in human terms, in ways that hit home for them, as was the case for the Rev. Will Bloedow.
Photo by Seattle Municipal Archives obtained via Creative Commons license.
