quality of care

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EHR Burdens Leave Docs Burned Out, in Critical Condition

John Commins | HealthLeaders Media | September 6, 2016

The electronic medical records that came with a promise of improving care efficiency are instead forcing physicians to spend more face time with a computer screen than with their patients. An observational analysis and survey of 57 primary care and specialty physicians in four states that was detailed this week in Annals of Internal Medicine shows that for every hour a physician spends providing direct clinical face time with a patient, nearly two additional hours are spent on EHRs and administrative tasks...

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EHR Usability, Functionality Top Concerns for Half of Hospitals

Jennifer Bresnick | Health IT Interoperability | August 3, 2016

Community hospitals continue to struggle to get their electronic health records to work and communicate the way they need them to, according to a new report from peer60, with EHR usability, limited functionality, and poor interoperability driving nearly 20 percent of survey respondents into a search for a replacement EHR...

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EHRs Inflict Enormous Pain on Doctors. It’ll Take More Than Stopwatches to Learn Why

Jonathan Bush | STAT | September 6, 2016

Electronic health records slow doctors down and distract them from meaningful face time caring for patients. That is the sad but unsurprising finding of a time and motion study published in Tuesday’s Annals of Internal Medicine1. A team of researchers determined that physicians are spending almost half of their time in the office on electronic health records (EHRs) and desk work and just 27 percent on face time with patients — which is what the vast majority of doctors went into medicine to do. Once they get home, they average another one to two hours completing EHRs...

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Electronic Medical Practice Environment Can Lead to Physician Burnout

Press Release | Mayo Clinic | June 27, 2016

The growth and evolution of the electronic environment in health care is taking a toll on U.S. physicians. That's according to a national study of physicians led by Mayo Clinic which shows the use of electronic health records and computerized physician order entry leads to lower physician satisfaction and higher rates of professional burnout. The findings appear in Mayo Clinic Proceedings...

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Ensuring Physician EHR Use Doesn’t Lead to Physician Burnout

Kyle Murphy | EHR Intelligence | March 28, 2016

With the entire healthcare industry undergoing tremendous amounts of change — from how care is coordinated and delivered to how providers are reimbursed for that care — there are likely to be side effects. One the head of the American Medical Association (AMA) is targeting is the matter of physician burnout tied to providers having to balance the day-to-day realities of patient care with federal and state mandates regulating aspects of that care such physician EHR use and clinical quality reporting...

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Epic EHR Implementation Causes Financial Issues at MASS Hospital

Sara Heath | EHR Intelligence | March 31, 2016

A Massachusetts hospital will be laying off 95 employees as a result of financial losses following an Epic Systems EHR implementation. According to Jessica Bartlett of Boston Business Journal, Southcoast Hospital will be cutting one percent of its workforce across all three of its locations in Fall River, Wareham, and New Bedford, Massachusetts...

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Former ONC Leaders Cite Challenges in Maximizing EHR Benefits

Joseph Goedert | Health Data Management | September 12, 2017

Four former national coordinators for health information technology have penned a perspective on achievements made in using electronic health records under the HITECH Act and where providers and the HIT industry still must go to continue past progress. The law spurred rapid progress toward digitizing the industry, which now is at an inflection point, say the authors, who include Vindell Washington, MD, Karen DeSalvo, MD, Farzad Mostashari, MD, and David Blumenthal, MD. EHRs have primed the industry to now achieve several positive results, including improving clinical guidelines, and sharing patient data seamlessly and securely...

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Goal of NYU-Continuum Hospital Mega-Merger: Raising Prices

Avik Roy | Forbes | June 8, 2012

On Wednesday, two big New York City hospital chains—New York University’s Langone Medical Center and Continuum Health Partners—announced that they were looking into merging into one mega-entity...There is only one reason why these two hospital chains are linking arms: to force insurers and patients to accept higher prices for their services. Read More »

Guess What: Docs Don't Like EHRs

It's kind of "dog-bites-man" type news, but there is even more evidence that physicians not only don't think EHRs are helping them but actually see them as contributing to burnout. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic found that use of EHRs (or computerized physician order entries -- CPOEs) was associated with lower satisfaction with time spent on clerical tasks, with nearly half of physicians saying the amount of time spent on clerical tasks was unreasonable.  No wonder the AMA CEO recently complained that physicians were turning into the "most expensive data entry force on the face of the planet."

Halamka's Recommendations for Effective Care Management

I recently joined the advisory board of Arcadia Healthcare Solutions, a leading provider of analytics, decision support, and workflow enhancement services. At my first advisory board meeting there was a rich debate about the marketplace for care management and population health tools. I’ve spent years studying such solutions at HIMSS and found most of the products are “compiled in Powerpoint”, which is a very agile programming language, since it’s so easy to change…

HHS Awards More Than $36 Million for Health Center Adoption of Health Information Technology

Press Release | Department of Health and Human Services | July 21, 2016

Today, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced more than $36 million in funding for 50 Health Center Controlled Networks (HCCNs) in 41 states and Puerto Rico. This increase in health information technology support will impact over 1,020 participating health center organizations in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. HCCNs improve access to care, enhance quality of care and achieve cost efficiencies through the redesign of practices to integrate services, optimize patient outcomes, or negotiate managed care contracts on behalf of participating health centers...

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HHS Called on to Eliminate Health Information Blocking

Kate Monica | EHR Intelligence | August 31, 2017

A coalition of healthcare stakeholders convened by Health IT Now called HHS and its departments to eliminate information blocking so that providers can effectively aggregate patient EHRs and advance interoperability. The letter from organizations including the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), AMIA, DirectTrust, and athenahealth requested HHS issue a proposed rule that takes existing laws, standardization, patient health data access, and other complicating factors into consideration...

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HHS Secretary Equates Health IT to ‘Burden’ for Doctors

Billy Mitchell | FedScoop | April 27, 2017

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price advocated Thursday for reducing the burden placed upon physicians and health care providers by the health technology that is otherwise meant to improve care for patients. Speaking at his first Health Datapalooza as the head of HHS, Price said the proliferation of health IT is something that “can have remarkably challenging and sometimes destructive consequences”...

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HHS Seeks to Reorient Obamacare Innovation Center

Charles S. Clark | Government Executive | September 26, 2017

Even as the Trump administration works to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it is taking advantage of one of the 2010 law's provisions to advance its own take on health system innovation. Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Sept. 20 announced plans to redirect the six-year-old Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation within the Health and Human Services Department. Its mission is to test new approaches or models to pay for and deliver high-quality health care more efficiently...

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HIT Think Why Interoperability Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better

Steve Meurer | Health Data Management | May 16, 2017

We hear the same thing from the health IT community every year: We’re committed to enabling seamless health data sharing. It’s the industry’s perennial commitment that electronic health records (EHRs) will soon share patient data across different platforms to ensure coordinated, high-quality care. Walls will come down in the name of better patient outcomes. Unfortunately, none of this is going to happen any time soon. In fact, I predict our industry’s struggle with interoperability will get worse before it gets better...

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