Convincing Doctors to Manage Health Records Electronically

The Wall Street Journal published an edited transcript of the interview with National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Dr. David Blumenthal about how he plans to convince hospitals and doctors to use EHRs.
When asked about the potential cost savings, Dr. Blumenthal said "There are disputes about how much we'll save and how we'll show the benefits of health IT. The combination of an improved payment system, an improved education system about health IT and improved governance of the health care system that prioritizes quality and efficiency together with health information technology is where the real payoff is."
Why can't the government provide hard data on cost savings for physicians? Sure, there are a lot of factors involved, but surely they could do a study and have a range showing cost savings based on certain criteria. Doctors want to see hard facts and statistics, not generalized statements.

Physician Frustration Grows with EMR Vendors

“It’s difficult to keep IT interested in the discussion. They don’t take the time to really understand the problem and want us to adapt to whatever software they come up with.”
This was one of comments made about EMR vendors in the 2009 ACPE Health Care Technology Survey. I find this so unfortunate, that physicians feel that IT vendors do not want to improve and enhance doctor performance. There is truth, though, with saying that IT wants physicians to adapt to the software they create. Unless the software company builds custom software applications, there is no way that a vendor can create software that will work for every single physician practice. There are too many variations to how offices perform daily tasks. So, there really isn’t any getting around this, there will be some modifications needed to the practices daily business processes. However, this shouldn’t be misconstrued that IT doesn’t take the time to understand the issues.
What doctors may not realize is that many EMR vendors employ business analysts who are experts in their industry and are trained to analyze business processes, then convert them into a software program for a programmer to code. Once the core product is ready, vendors will typically release updates to the software, which are additions to the core product to handle the many variations, thus accommodating more practices and how they currently run their business, with minimal changes needed in their current business processes.
Ultimately, doctors need to realize that EMR vendors do want to solve problems. While there are always exceptions to the rule, physician practices need to be open and accept the changes outside of the technology that will occur with the use of an EMR. We can all agree that email is much faster, reliable and preferred to regular mail. However, we all had to change how we communicated in writing to people through shorter, more frequent messages versus less frequent long letters. We also had to adapt to the changes in time management this caused since messages could be delivered instantly versus 1-7 days by regular mail, depending on where the recipient lived and what mail method was used to send the letter. This is a very simple and basic example, but you get my point. Sometimes, changing business processes is a good thing.
Read the full survey at http://net.acpe.org/MembersOnly/pejournal/2009/MarchApril/Weimar1.pdf