« Physicians paid to adopt technology »

The adoption of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems has been slow.  The perception is the high cost, security and privacy are prohibiting the adoption by physicians.  However the time the physician saves and the desire to become a better-practising physician with better information, should drive their decision.

Not to mention the gains that the average person will see when they move from physician to physician for any complicated care.  Check out this YouTube video on helping physicians adopt EMRs.

To purchase an EMR system, costs may run upwards of $10,000, which doesn't seem expensive for a physician, practice, or hospital.  However is does come down to the benefits gained, which are improving the business, providing better customer service, and allowing people to walk into any medical organization and give that physician access to their medical records electronically and without delay.

Now it seems governments feel the need to help physicians with subsidies.

President Obama earmarked $20 billion to spur the adoption of EMRs in the U.S.  While the Canadian government is offering up to 70% subsidies for physicians to buy an EMR system.  I wonder whether physicians really need this much financial support but I digress.  The positive side is healthcare information is moving into the electronic world and there will be significant gains for the average person when we get there!

We are at the infancy stage in the EMR industry.

• Less than 30% of Canada's roughly 63,500 doctors use EMR systems to improve care and reduce duplication of tests.


• 67% of US physicians offices don't use an EMR system.

Interestingly the top physician specialty areas with the highest EMR adoption include anesthesiology, emergency medicine and internal medicine.  Those areas with the lowest adoption rates include urology, psychiatry and plastic surgery.

Other roadblocks are security and privacy.  I'll save this for a future post.

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