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				 Physician survey 
Record Review 
by Patty Enrado  
Posted on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 - 12:58 am 
   
  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. 
Comments
Posted by pharris1 on Thu, May 20, 2010 - 12:23 am. 
   
The term "cloud computing" describes the  practice of storing all data, software, and hardware off-site, with the system  accessible to hospitals and providers via a web browser-based login. No need to  install expensive infrastructure, and secure data storage is part of the  package. The EHR system is immediately available to any Internet-connected  computer in the world. With cloud computing, everything you do is now web-based  instead of desktop-based. 
Posted by James L. Holly on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 - 06:04 pm. 
   
  I read the report last night and forwarded to all my  staff (260 staff and providers). We have used NextGen since 1998. I have  reviewed all of the EMRs in the survey. 
   
  We SETMA, LLP (www.jameslhollymd.com) has used NextGen since 1999. It was no  surprise to me that the less expensive EMRs would win this kind of survey. Many  of those however will have difficulty meeting "meaning use"  standards. 
   
  None of them would meet SETMA's requirement for extensive  disease management. All of our electronic patient tools are published on our  website along with our public reporting of our providers performance on over  130 quality measures including HEDIS, NCQA, NQF, PCPI, PQRI and AQA. 
   
  I am not impressed with this survey. It is more a  "beauty contest" rather than a judgment of transforming healthcare.  NextGen has been the mainspring of SETMA's growth and expansion. We have won  every award including the Davies Award, MS HUG's Clinic of the Year and others.  NextGen has given us that capacity. 
   
  Go to our website. See what is possible with NextGen and  then decide where it belongs in the EMR Galaxy. Along with a very few like  EPIC, NextGen leads the parade inspite of this poorly constructed and biased  survey tool. 
   
  James L. Holly, MD 
  CEO, SETMA, LLP 
  www.jameslhollymd.comn 
409 654-6819 
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