On Thursday, President-elect Obama explicitly named EMR’s as a major part of his go-forward economic plan:
To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized. This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests. But it just won’t save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs – it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system.
Some folks feel encouraged by this goal, which mirrors President Bush’s goal date of 2014 for having the nation’s medical practices making the paper to EMR transition. Others are more reserved, citing the difficulties in investing in the conversion with so little money to go around — from any source, including patients, these days.
Others are flat-out skeptical: the lack of EMR’s aren’t the problem, it’s the lack of universal healthcare, they say.
Me, I feel like Scotty before meeting the new captain of a really worn down starship: Will he be Captain Kirk? Or Captain Dunsel (”a part that serves no purpose”)?
“I ken what warp drives can do, laddie”
There’s really no question any more that the technology works — your mileage may vary, but we are past the point of no return. Some early planes crashed, and in the sci-fi world of Star Trek, there were warp core disasters on the way to lightspeed. But once flying, there was no going back to rail, steamship or chemical rocket travel.
From my standpoint as a physician user and IT consultant, integrated EMR and practice management systems have long since advanced beyond theory and marketing hype. They demonstrably make it possible to track costs, curb waste, improve and justify reimbursement, refine patient care and treatment protocols, and perhaps most important of all, to document superior value for the patient. It all happens simultaneously, and it happens on a daily basis.
Successful implementations don’t fall into your lap; they require endless, tireless support behind the scenes, and dedication from all users. But properly done, they are the bedrock of an infrastructure that can make remarkable things possible.
“And this old lass is broken, and in a bad need of an overhaul”
No argument, there. The USS HealthCare needs some remarkable things pretty darn soon.
If you don’t think integrated EMR’s are the equivalent of warp drives, think of them as really, really souped-up intercoms inside this wallowing, supertanker-sized ship. Without them, is it really conceivable that different parts of the system could communicate with one another, much less get things done for the passengers (patients)? Much less steer the ship away from disaster?
For a ship of this size…inconceivable, voyaging without EMR’s. If you want a “ship” that works, that is.
“Aye, what kinda cap’n will he be?”
Matt Ethington of SimplifyMD pointed out to me, that beyond President Bush’s stated goal of going digital by 2014, there was no actual federal mandate with teeth to make it so. Michael Leavitt, the previous Health & Human Services Secretary, was an avowed advocate of going digital, and going digital yesterday. But actual progress has been slow this administration, for any number of reasons.
Jill Dyche reported on the Democratic rhetoric of both then-candidates Obama and Clinton, how EMR implementation will ultimately save billions, which is where “all that money” is going to come from. This jives with what we in the industry know to be true: integrated systems allow system-wide efficiencies to occur, saving time and money all over the place. So this time, the macroscopic rhetoric at least somewhat agrees with the microscopic reality — and both of those talking heads are now at the top of the national power pyramid.
Will the repeated calls for healthcare reform — and integrated EMR adoptions — go somewhere this time? It’s all talk so far, but compared to the past 8 years, just what we’ve been hearing before the inauguration is sounding consistent and encouraging.
