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March 31, 2009So the funding physicians have been hoping for over the past several years has finally been approved. Now the questions for lawmakers and funding administrators is how to get the process of EMR adoption moving forward.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is attending this year’s HIMSS Conference and Exhibition in Chicago to address the Health IT funding’s purposes, as well as the challenges and next steps of gaining wide spread physician EMR adoption. He will be outlining his plans to address the following questions:
- How will we ensure the $19 billion is spent wisely and effectively?
- How will we ensure HIEs are ready to support electronic health records?
- How will we protect privacy? How will we build decision support in the new technology for doctors?
“Whitehouse would like to see the ARRA funds accomplish two major goals and he’ll introduce supporting legislation if necessary. He wants to make the adoption of EHRs less of a losing proposition for physicians than many of them believe the technology to be. And he’d like to fund a couple of geographic and/or specialty areas to focus on creating fully functional HIEs that demonstrate the value of communitywide interaction.
Before coming to the Senate, Whitehouse established the Rhode Island Quality Institute, a collaboration of stakeholders working to improve the quality of care. (”Sen. Whitehouse: Let’s Get to Work“)
Another session at the conference will also discuss ideas for physicians seeking to get their share of the stimulus funds. For more on the conference, click here. The need for EMRs is strong, however, according to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine:
“Only 1.5% of U.S. hospitals have a “comprehensive electronic records system” implemented across all their major clinical units, according to a new survey of nearly 3,000 U.S. hospitals. Some 7.6% of hospitals have a “basic” system in place, the study concludes.
“The very low levels of adoption of electronic health records in U.S. hospitals suggest that policymakers face substantial obstacles to the achievement of health care goals that depend on health information technology,” the study concludes. “A policy strategy focused on financial support, interoperability and training of technical support staff may be necessary to spur adoption of electronic records systems in U.S. hospitals.”
The study also cites the most common barriers to electronic systems as inadequate capital (74%), concerns about maintenance costs (44%) and resistance among physicians (36%). Another recent report cited that 80% of physician practices nationwide still do not have an EMR. EMR providers such as Practice Partner and McKesson Healthcare are independently producing educational resources to support national and local efforts in the hopes that educating physicians on the new funding will help them understand how to move forward in the EMR software selection.
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