By Aine Cryts
Many physician practices around the country initially installed electronic health records (EHRs) in pursuit of Meaningful Use dollars. Now that the regulatory pressure has diminished, practices must figure out how to fully benefit from their EHR investment, particularly in terms of facilitating success in population health initiatives and accountable care organizations.
But if the chosen EHR isn't meeting long-term needs, practices must consider several factors before shopping around for a new vendor, according to a recent article from Physicians Practice.
For starters, practices may want to switch their EHR if they have a billing system from a different vendor, said Derek Kosiorek, a principal consultant with the Medical Group Management Association's Healthcare Consulting Group. Two vendors mean two different databases, he said, and two databases require the technical expertise to write and maintain interfaces between those two systems.
"What matters is where the data is housed," Kosiorek told the publication. "If you have the same vendor for your billing system and EHR, chances are that all of your patients' information will be stored in one database. This makes the information easy to find and work with. If you're working with interfaces, you have to get data from one database into another."
Today's competitive environment--where larger EHR vendors are gobbling up smaller vendors--is another reason to consider a switch, he said. Big EHR vendors, he noted, may be more interested in acquiring new customers than they are in properly maintaining the acquired vendor's EHR.
Physician practices are also getting more thoughtful about how they implement technology, Denny Brennan, executive director at the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium, told FiercePracticeManagement. The "gold rush" of Meaningful Use is now over for vendors, he said, so EHR vendors will have to improve the user experience or risk getting squeezed out by companies that do.
Vendors' investments in software updates and releases, conducting practice assessments and enhancing clinical workflow are improving satisfaction among physician practices, as previously reported in FiercePracticeManagement.
Still, it's not all roses: A survey of 600 physicians around the globe by the consulting firm Accenture revealed that 70 percent believe EHRs decrease the time they spend with patients, and 76 percent say lack of interoperability hinders the delivery of high-quality care.
To learn more:
- read the article