Generally speaking, technology is improving the lives of patients everywhere. However, it has not come without a price, and sometimes that fact seems to be overlooked. The MPI Group found some alarming data in a study conducted in late 2013. After glancing at the numbers, one can only deduce that in general, electronic health records (EHR) may not be as great as we initially thought. Particularly, it is very concerning that many of the physicians interviewed felt that implementing EHR has made patient care worse. Less surprising findings included dissatisfaction with interoperability and functionality. Additionally, 66 percent of providers would not purchase their current EHR software again. Let’s take a look at some other misconceptions discovered by the MPI Group data.
Misconception #1: Most physicians think EHR is a good investment
Unfortunately, an EHR may not be a great investment. In fact, 70 percent of the respondents in the study felt that the effort and cost of implementing EHRs in their practice was not worthwhile. Many of them had spent over $100,000 on an EHR and 77 percent of larger practices actually spent over $200,000 for software. Even worse, many claimed that converting to electronic records actually resulted in financial losses for their practices. In an article from Medical Economics, one physician stated that the EHR actually slowed him down, resulting in decreased productivity. Others complained that there are too many vendors within the industry, making it more expensive and not in any way helping doctors to improve care.
Misconception #2: Better access to labs and radiology
This is one of the biggest “we are almost there” aspects of EHR. In some health systems, doctors have access to diagnostic labs and tests as long as they were performed within specific places. However, many times, the systems don’t communicate with each other. This forces doctors to be familiar with additional software in order to view radiology images and routine labs. That is assuming physicians deal with only one lab and one place that does radiology. The problem is that doctors may actually utilize numerous facilities, each of which may have a different computer system. What could be a single location to review all of a patient’s information turns into a scattered electronic mess, much worse than a thick paper chart, especially when one of the software systems is malfunctioning.
Misconception #3: EHR has helped to improve patient care
By far the most disturbing finding of this study was that 45 percent of physicians felt that their EHR made patient care worse. The interruption of face-to-face interaction is very common among physicians. Many will begin an appointment by spending minutes sorting through different screens on a laptop, then often glance at the screen during the interview, only to conclude by spending 5 minutes entering orders and documenting the visit. In the past, doctors delayed the data entry until after the appointment. By merging data entry with the patient interview, patients now experience even less interaction with the physician. Not to mention, physicians become highly distracted by the onslaught of multi-tasking and can easily miss obvious diagnostic clues.
Have we rushed into things?
Overall, we may be a little too zealous about pushing forward with EHR. The technology still remains in a very experimental phase and it is far from optimized. Giving physicians incentives to abandon paper and make the switch to electronic systems may be doing more harm than good, especially if physicians are moving to a lesser quality EHR. In actuality, it might be very unfair to urge a well-run paper practice into taking on the financial losses and the increased stress of installing a new system. Currently the burden lies on physicians to make the switch. A better solution would be to make the existing technology more intuitive, organized, and seamless. Until then, we may be forcing doctors to take a step backward.
