Electronic Medical Records

It’s what we don’t hear at EHR and HIE conference presentations that gets our attention. We hear the assertion that Web-based EHRs are superior to other alternatives for smaller practices, but we don’t hear much about their bad points. One provider’s solution is another provider’s problem – particularly when 100,000 primary care physicians (known as priority primary care physicians, or PPCPs, when they sign up with regional extension centers) are involved. The “single-deployment approach is best for everyone” assertion being propagated is a dangerous and potentially expensive myth. In our opinion, there are three major deployment approaches each practice should consider.

Since our article ran in the July issue of Health Management Technology on the impact of delays in defining meaningful use (MU), the long-awaited update to January’s interim MU release was finally issued on July 13. MSP is already analyzing the changes and updating its MSP EHR Selector to reflect them. The EHR Selector is a Web-based tool that uses 689 criteria to characterize all EHR products from developers who submit them and are willing to have them independently vetted. Once this update has been completed, MSP will invite (via e-mail) all currently subscribed EHR developers to update their product profile to indicate compliance with the final MU standards. The EHR Selector includes an MU profile that allows all MU criteria to be asserted with one mouse click.

What practice owners should consider when looking at electronic health records systems.

Passage of the HITECH Act provides medical practices a windfall of incentives (ranging up to $44,000) to adopt and use a certified electronic health record (EHR) system in a meaningful way. Because of this, there has been a renewed effort from solution providers to promote solutions as a one-stop shop for all the needs of the practices. At the same time, practices are trying to implement a solution and reap the benefits ASAP. However, before the practices start scouting and evaluating products, it is important to understand that the implementation of an EHR product is a complex activity requiring dedicated effort and due diligence. The numbers of implementations that fail in the first year of their implementation provide testimony to this.

U.S. physicians who are eligible providers (EPs) will adopt electronic health records (EHR) in the next three to four years or face federal patient reimbursement penalties. To assist EPs, regional extension centers (RECs) were funded to move practices from paper-based to EHR-based documentation; but there are other ways to accomplish the same result, including independent EHR consultants and “do-it-yourself” approaches. This article contrasts these approaches and looks at how the change in the federal approach has affected EHR adoption processes overall.