EMR/EHR Adoption barriers

             

A survey says that cost remains the biggest barrier in EMR adoption. EMRs and EHRs are very expensive applications, and are human-resource intensive in implementation and adoption. The key barriers of EMR adoption are

·         Expensive

·         Poor Usability

·         Myths on EMR adoption

   

  

      EMR/EHR systems are expensive

 It's true that most of the EMR systems are highly expensive. But there are many new, cheaper technologies released in the market. We really have to pay attention to the free, web-based versions out there.

·      Benefits which EMR offer outweighs the cost and learning curve.
·         EMR use may not save money but certainly save lives by reducing the prescription errors.

       Usability key to wide EMR adoption

Font size, frame size, number of keystrokes, clicks and screen flips in an EMR doesn’t seem to impact a multi-billion dollar market of electronic medical record systems. But these annoyances will add up to a large difference in hospitals who adopt EMR systems. These are the micro-factors that are going to be important in physician adoption of EMR, and continued use of the systems.

EMR systems that force clinicians to re-enter the same information multiple times, emphasize the need for systems to follow routine conventions such as adopting a Microsoft Windows-like interface. One physician complained that her EMR system took ten minutes to order a routine mammogram. One of the recommendations of the American Medical Association and other groups is that usability should be added to the certification process for EMR vendors.

       Misconceptions about EMR

Many healthcare vendors know that they have to adopt EMR and also want to do it. But, there are some myths which obstruct them from doing it which are as follows:

§  EMR/EHR slows down workflow and disrupts the practice.

Physicians consistently express concern that adoption of an EMR will slow down their workflows and disrupt their practice.  Paper-based records are still by far the most common method of recording patient information for most hospitals and practices in the U.S. The majority of doctors still find their ease of data entry and low cost hard to part with. But the increasing usability of EMR and negligible storage space requirements is making EMR systems a more viable option.

§   Insecurity of Patient Information.

Hacking incidents on EMR systems that lead to altering of patient data or destruction of clinical systems is a major concern to healthcare vendors. But usually, hackers have very limited access to data stored in a cloud based system. Meanwhile, web-based EMR systems protect patient information from disasters, floods, building fires, and tornadoes that could easily destroy paper records.

§   Reduces patient-doctor face time.

Some patients think that physician spends too much time looking at the screen rather than at them. But with EHR doctors are better able to educate patients about their health, using graphical presentations of test results and they don't have to flip through multiple paper charts during a patient visit, which actually enables doctors to offer more face time.

§   Training and Implementation takes too long.

Most EHR vendors charge for training. Training time is also expensive. An EHR system should not take several days to learn; it should be designed with user ease in mind. If the EHR is customized according to the user’s preferences and the basic design is intuitive, three to four hours of training should be enough.

It is also important not to wait too long after training to implement your EHR. As there is chance to forget what has been learnt if new skills are not put into practice quickly. If anything is forgotten it again takes additional time for follow up training.