Barriers to EMRs
Side Note: Have you already moved your practice over to electronic medical records (EMRs)? If you have, congratulations! If you haven’t, that is probably why you are reading this post.
A new study, conducted by Medical Group Management Association, which covers 4,588 health-care organizations, including practices and hospitals, yielded some interesting results. First, of those that have yet to implement EMRs, the vast majority haven’t done so because they feel that it would significantly reduce productivity not only during the transition, but also after the transition was complete. The study also found that many haven’t implemented EMRs yet due to their expense and because they didn’t think there would be a good return on investment.
Interestingly, among those already using EMRs, more than half said that they either “mildly” or “severely” underestimated the amount of training time required for both themselves and their staff on the new system.
Every time we cover EMRs, we can’t help but mention the possibility of a data breach. It is an unfortunate reality of this data-driven, electronic world we now live in. As a precaution, physicians should know ahead of time if their med mal policy covers such an event (and to what extent, if it does) and understand what a physician or practice is required to do by law, should a data breach occur in his or her practice. At MyMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.com, many of our liability policies include data breach coverage, but check with your insurance representative to make sure, if you are interested in this type of coverage.
MyMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.com may be able to lower your doctor liability premiums. To see, complete our free quote request today.
What Are the Barriers to Using Electronic Medical Records?
By Katherine Hobson
From WSJ.com
April 7, 2011, 12:02 PM ET
The reasons for not adopting electronic medical records are pretty straightforward: those on the sidelines think the systems are expensive, that they won’t produce a return on investment and that they’ll cut productivity even after they’re fully implemented.
So finds a new survey, conducted by the Medical Group Management Association and covering 4,588 health-care organizations, including independent practices, hospitals, integrated systems and others. Some groups were still using paper records and others reported being at various stages of implementing electronic ones.
