> Instead of stimulating use of such software, they say, the government should be a rule-setting referee to encourage the development of an open software platform on which innovators could write electronic health record applications.
The problem is that they're trying to use this financial incentive to spur providers to adopt EMR before the technology is mature enough and while many unanswered questions remain as to the best ways of doing things.
You don't want government mandating these technologies because the government is grossly incompetent at doing such things. The VA has made its system (VistA) open source for those who want it. But EMR radically modifies the way a facility does business and they don't all way to change to the VA's way.
I had a doc call me this week, interested in getting his share of the government money, who said, "Hey, I've been dictating charts and have a perfectly acceptable, efficient way of doing things that I've used for 20 years. I really have no reason to change, but if they're going to give me 40k to do it, I'm up for it". Of course, when he realized it was going to cost more than 40k to make it happen, he was less interested.
A lot of these guys have developed methods that work well for them. It is an absolute lie that moving to an electronic health record will save money, overall. I do not know what the motivation is, other than to try to get health care data that can be better analyzed for god-knows-what purpose. |
