Considering the future of EHRs and MU

This week AMDIS held its first fall symposium in Boston where the emphasis was on disruption, innovation and the future of health IT and EHRs.

Healthcare runs too many processes through EHRs which, “on the whole, are older technology developed in the 1980s and 1990s,” said Kenneth D. Mandl, MD, MPH, Harvard Medical School professor and director of the Intelligent Health Laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital.

In the consumer world, we are willing to use multiple tools to get the job done, such as Google for searches, iTunes for music and Word for word processing. None of these companies has managed to produce a platform that can be used for all of our needs so why would it be any different for healthcare? He cited a large healthcare delivery system that uses its EHR for communication between clinicians. “Is that really the best technology for that use?”

Meanwhile, the debate about Meaningful Use continues on. John Glaser, PhD, CEO of Health Services, Siemens Healthcare, said he agrees that it’s worth pressing the pause button and evaluating what is working and what’s not.

“I think it’s worth extending for a year. What was done through legislation was an extraordinary effort to recast health IT. As bright as the people who wrote the legislation are, it’s not possible to get it all right. You will make mistakes. At this junction, let’s reassess what’s working and what’s not.”

There is some evidence of a slowdown in EHR adoption, he said, citing a healthy percentage of providers who got their first year of incentive pay for Stage 1 and now do not want to take the steps necessary to achieve Stage 2.

Whether providers are dropping out or putting a pause on their Meaningful Use efforts, the situation can be “broadly characterized as a ‘trough of disillusionment.’ Sometimes in this industry we talk about the trough and say it’s normal that we go through that. We’ve got to be careful about the depth and duration of the trough and not dismiss it as something we’ll inevitably recover from.”

Is your organization putting the pause on Meaningful Use? Please share your thoughts.

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor