EHR Adoption

The biggest challenge to adopt technology to provide patient care.

By: Atif G. Memon
Healthcare IT Consultant

Adopting a technology is never been so easy for any of the industry. With the advancement of today’s world 2010 played a vital role. US healthcare market made a remarkable achievement while making lots of problems for those who are not aware with this technology. In this regards, I made a survey “EMR VS EHR”, in order to gain the knowledge from healthcare providers and IT professionals. I was amazed that instead of such a huge advancement in the market, there is no any proper reason to adopt EMR technology. Some of the providers want EMR because of the incentives; some of them want to avoid any penalty by the Government. On the other hand EMR vendors are making such technology which is based on complicated system, making lots of problems for those caregivers who are already unaware about this system. In last months of 2010, there were conducted lots of seminars, webinars and conferences to understand the use of EMR but it never been into the right direction. While being into the market, I always use to find a solution and try to make ideas that how to make providers to facilitate in adoption of EMR, while they understand it to use. An EMR should be a self-dependent, that don’t need any further EMR Experts to use it. EMR should also be used as a secure asset of patient information that should only be shared between Caregiver and patient. I would prefer that if Healthcare IT Professionals works to minimize the complexity of EMR rather than making a hybrid solution, which would be easier to adopt for the providers. This will not only be helpful for the Industry but also for Caregivers to adopt this Technology.

Statistics

According to research at Navinet, Inc. Statistics is given below for Barriers to EMR Adoption.

                                                                2009                       2010

We do not need it                                21%                       27%

Cost                                                        41%                       49%

It cannot integrate into our             7%                         13%

existing system

Our workflow does not support      9%                        20%

EMR implementation

Do not see ROI for our office         16%                       26%

Our Physician is not ready to         N/A                         46%

pursue