Do EMR/EHR's really help?
Contrary to conventional wisdom, EHRs could reduce the quality of care and increase costs, says a pioneer in healthcare information technology.
Donald Simborg is an internist who is credited with creating HL7; the computer protocol for sharing medical information.
In an article that will appear in the March/April edition of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, he will be making an argument that EHR adoption may not be in our best interests.
Contrary to what many people believe, EHRs could reduce the quality of care and increase costs. They certainly do not save during a routine office visit. They do however make it easier to document more of what is actually done during the visit and that is its advantage.
Vendors promote the idea that their products will save them time and increase revenue through higher evaluation and management coding but this is somewhat problematic because higher E&M coding boosts overall healthcare costs.
Physicians have probably been undercoding for years because they were not able to document all that was necessary for the higher codes, but with EHR’s, you can create a 3-4 page office note with a relatively few clicks.
EHR’s typically default to provide maximum documentation in order to maximize coding. But if the system isn’t set up accurately, the documentation produced may record things that never really happened.
Dr. Simborg co-chaired a blue-ribbon IT committee that recommended to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that it build sufficient anti-fraud mechanisms into the national health-data network envisioned by the Bush administration.
This sounds like more government red-tape and how is this expense going to play into the overall healthcare dollars?
The doctors in my office would love to go back to pen and paper, cash at time of visit, no billing of insurance and minimal threat of malpractice, but that isn’t reality.
So we have invested more than $100,000 dollars into EHR’s and billing programs to try and stay ahead of the curve.
I agree that it has not really helped with patient care but has helped satisfy all the regulatory issues that government and the legal systems have created.
Donald Simborg is an internist who is credited with creating HL7; the computer protocol for sharing medical information.
In an article that will appear in the March/April edition of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, he will be making an argument that EHR adoption may not be in our best interests.
Contrary to what many people believe, EHRs could reduce the quality of care and increase costs. They certainly do not save during a routine office visit. They do however make it easier to document more of what is actually done during the visit and that is its advantage.
Vendors promote the idea that their products will save them time and increase revenue through higher evaluation and management coding but this is somewhat problematic because higher E&M coding boosts overall healthcare costs.
Physicians have probably been undercoding for years because they were not able to document all that was necessary for the higher codes, but with EHR’s, you can create a 3-4 page office note with a relatively few clicks.
EHR’s typically default to provide maximum documentation in order to maximize coding. But if the system isn’t set up accurately, the documentation produced may record things that never really happened.
Dr. Simborg co-chaired a blue-ribbon IT committee that recommended to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that it build sufficient anti-fraud mechanisms into the national health-data network envisioned by the Bush administration.
This sounds like more government red-tape and how is this expense going to play into the overall healthcare dollars?
The doctors in my office would love to go back to pen and paper, cash at time of visit, no billing of insurance and minimal threat of malpractice, but that isn’t reality.
So we have invested more than $100,000 dollars into EHR’s and billing programs to try and stay ahead of the curve.
I agree that it has not really helped with patient care but has helped satisfy all the regulatory issues that government and the legal systems have created.
Labels: EMR, healthcare, legal
posted by Anonymous at 6:15 AM
1 Comments:
Whoa....Doc.
The average lay person can't begin to follow this posting.
What are EHR's?
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