Physicians Have Reason to Be Cautious in Adopting Health Information Technology
Physicians and medical practices have been accused of being slow to adopt electronic medical records (EMR), ePrescribing and other health information technologies (HIT). Although statistics support this claim, physicians have plenty of reasons to be cautious.
A 2007 study conducted by the Pennsylvania Medical Society showed that less than 20 percent of Pennsylvania physician respondents use an EMR system—an increase of just 6 percent from a similar survey conducted by the Society in 2005.
At that pace, it will take 27 years to achieve full adoption—which will not satisfy the state and federal governments.
But many physicians face significant barriers to adoption. The initial cost to purchase the software, hardware, user licenses and training can be formidable—not to mention the long-term cost of maintaining the system.
Some physicians report an initial loss of productivity while they adjust to their new EMR system. This can be frustrating, but may be avoided through proper planning and preparation.
The same 2007 study revealed that many physicians do not have the basic telecommunications infrastructure to support some HIT applications.
For example, most physicians who use broadband in their practices have DSL connections. DSL can generally support ePrescribing, but physicians and software vendors report that DSL service breaks down when multiple physicians are using ePrescribing, during thunderstorms, or even when school is out and more children are using the Internet. Critical applications like ePrescribing must have dependable connections, so inadequate broadband connections present yet another barrier to physicians’ successful use of HIT.
These barriers, however, are not insurmountable. Check out our eHealth technology page to see how you can move past the barriers and successfully use HIT in your practice.
Last Updated: 6/12/2008