Health Centers have a big problem with EHRs

The HITECH Act of 2009 led to the promotion and adoption, among other things, of the EHR, or Electronic Health Records.

While the act stipulated penalties for violation of the provisions, it conferred significant incentives for EHR adoption, to the tune of $30+ billion federal government dollars.

Hospitals then went on an EHR implementation spree.

A decade later, we are at a point where we can examine the results of EHR adoption. Depending on who you speak to, you get different reactions. Physicians tend to less approving of the software. They claim it has added more “screen” work, at the cost of patient face-time. One physician did not like the alerts that he has to “click through” to get rid of.

Hospital administrators – who evaluated and spent big dollars to implement such systems – are more approving.

Reactions in the press are mixed, from the positive outlook in this article, to the other , doomsday extreme with this piece from Medscape.

In our interviews with a bunch of clinicians ranging from MDs to nurses, to pharmacists and even one head of EHR, we listed at least six chronic problems with EHRs in hospitals, see image below.

EHRs are firmly in place and contain a treasure trove of information that can be used for better patient outcomes.

Our A! Health platform harnesses the insights from EHRs, enriches it with other meaningful data and new digital technologies such as machine learning, to come up with deep insights that lead to a better outcome.

Contact us at info@aihealthinsights.com to learn more.