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From Karen Bell, Director of the Office of Health IT Adoption at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:
We still lack a compelling business case in terms of purchasing, upkeep, and decreased productivity. Physicians have to shell out considerable upfront costs and lose about 20 percent productivity in the first few months as personnel get used to the system. And the average primary-care physician doesn’t have time to research different systems and learn how to use them: every minute they are not seeing patients, they are not getting paid.
(Thanks to Technology Review)
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November 17, 2008 at 11:43 pm
I understand the reasons but I’m not convinced they’re good enough excuses. Imagine a scenario where the wrong medication is prescribed due to poor handwriting or poorly kept records. If that scenario could be prevented by an EMR software system, then I think there needs to be a better reason than a 20% productivity cut over a 2 month periods in order to NOT go with the more structured solution. The reality is that there are inexpensive or even free solutions out there that are better than nothing and I know that EMR implementation does not have to be all that difficult.
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