EMR and EHR Buyers Beware Deceptive Sales

The study was recently published in a prestigious academic journal shortly after we started using an EMR in our Dermatology practice. It revealed that on average, your physicians spend 2 hours inputting data and clicking through their Electronic Medical Records (EMR) for every hour of direct care with patients. http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/news-item/ehr/study-ambulatory-physicians-spend-half-their-time-ehrs-desk-work

I was skeptical reading the study that EMR’s hurt physicians, after all, the Health Information Technology (HIT) company which sold us our EMR system, which was the most popular EMR used by 35% of the US dermatologists, had assured us that their software and hardware would make our practice more efficient, productive, safer, improve our outcomes and speed compliance with new Federal Regulations to avoid a host of looming Federal penalties and enhance value based care (outcomes/costs). In fact, their advertisements and marketing state that their EMR is, "Transforming how healthcare information is created, consumed & utilized to increase efficiency & improve outcomes".

Today, after approximately 8 months of using EMR’s in our practice I and the dozen doctors in our practice can definitively report that our EMR has a negative value on our patient’s outcomes and our practice.  There is not one aspect of our electronic medical records system which has made our practice more efficient, productive, and safer, improved our clinical outcomes, saved our patients or ourselves expenses or time or facilitated our compliance with Federal Regulations...