Survey shows how IT helps—and hinders—physician practices

At the same time physician practices look at technology to help them succeed, the same tools are serving as barriers in their ability to do so, according to a survey report from CareCloud and QuantiaMD. This is the third annual survey.

Among seven key challenges to practice profitability, three were related to health IT. More than half (52 percent) of survey respondents said the ICD-10 transition was a challenge to profitability, 35 percent named EHRs and Meaningful Use and 16 percent named patient privacy and information security requirements presented. Respondents could select more than one answer. The top two challenges were declining reimbursement (62 percent) and rising costs (55 percent).

Physicians' outlook on profitability has improved compared to last year's findings, with positive perspectives rising from 19 percent to 24 percent. However, the positive perspective is still outweighed by the 31 percent of practices that reported a negative perspective. The survey showed signs of stabilization, as neutral profitability perspectives increased from 30 percent to 35 percent this past year.

When it comes to areas physician practices are targeting for operational performance improvement, 33 percent said technology--the third most commonly named area. The report suggests physicians are still considering replacing old technology for newer systems, with 20 percent of physicians indicating plans to replace their practice management system or EHR in the coming year.

Physicians are replacing their IT systems primarily because the current ones don't integrate with other technologies (39 percent). Their current sysems also are hard to use and ineffective (37 percent), are not cost-effective (33 percent), are not ready for ICD-10 or Meaningful Use (27 percent) or the vendor is not innovating on the current solution (20 percent).

"This year's physician profitability index indicates a potential, albeit slow, shift in sentiment," according to the report. "The share of physicians looking ahead with positive or flat profitability expectations is growing, while the share convinced of a downward path is declining."

Access the complete survey.