HIPAA Blog

[ Thursday, March 12, 2009 ]

 

"Free" May Be A Problem: according to this article by Medical Software Advice, there's the additional concern that "free" software EMR solutions, if they come about, won't be the cure either, in no small part because of the "moral hazard" argument. Physicians may not be as likely to embrace a new EMR project, support it, or work with it simply because it's free; the perceived value won't be there.

With one caveat, I would tend to disagree; once a physician practice implements an EMR, there's no parallel system for a physician to use instead of the EMR. The physician won't have any real choice in the matter; he'll have to use it to input and extract medical records and serve his patients. The caveat? If the paper method is left to stand along with the EMR method, the possibility of failure reappears. According to the article, a lot of EMR projects fail; I'd suspect that, in every case, the "analog" paper system was left available alongside the "digital" system. I know you need it as a safety net in case of a catastrophic failure of the EMR at implementation, but if it's only available as an emergency fallback, and otherwise isn't available, the lack of choice will drag physicians into adoption.

At least that's how I see it.

Jeff [5:24 PM]

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