Electronic health records boon or bane?
Docs who use them are happy, but there are not many who use the facility…….Steve Lohr. New York
Docs who use them are happy, but there are not many who use the facility…….Steve Lohr. New York
A government-sponsored survey of the use of computerised patient records by doctors points to two seemingly contradictory conclusions, and a health care system at odds with itself.
The report, published online on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine found that doctors who use electronic health records say overwhelmingly that such records have helped improve the quality and timeliness of care. Yet fewer than one in five of the nation’s doctors has started using such records.
The national survey found that electronic records were used in less than 9% of small offices with one to three doctors, where nearly half the country’s doctors practice medicine.
Dr. Paul Feldan, one of three doctors in a primary care practice in Mount Laurel, N.J., considered investing in electronic health records, and decided against it. The initial cost of upgrading the office’s personal computers, buying new software and obtaining technical support to make the shift would be $15,000 to $20,000 a doctor, he estimated. Then, during the time-consuming conversion from paper to computer records, the practice would be able to see far fewer patients, perhaps doubling the cost.
Dr. Paul Feldan, one of three doctors in a primary care practice in Mount Laurel, N.J., considered investing in electronic health records, and decided against it. The initial cost of upgrading the office’s personal computers, buying new software and obtaining technical support to make the shift would be $15,000 to $20,000 a doctor, he estimated. Then, during the time-consuming conversion from paper to computer records, the practice would be able to see far fewer patients, perhaps doubling the cost.
“Certainly, the idea of electronic records is terrific,” Dr. Feldan said. “But if we don’t see patients, we don’t get paid. The economics of it just seem so daunting.”
“We have a broken market for electronic health record adoption because the people who gain financially are not the people who pay,” said Dr. Blackford Middleton, a health technology expert at Partners Healthcare, a nonprofit medical group that includes Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
To fix the market, Dr. Middleton, like others, recommends that the government play a role in providing incentives or subsidies to speed the use of computerised patient records in the United States, whose adoption rate trails most developed nations.
The report also found that electronic health records were used by 51 per cent of larger practices, with 50 or more doctors. NYT