5 ways poorly thought out health IT can worsen patient safety

The frontlines of health care have been transformed over the last decade as electronic medical records have been rolled out across America. Unfortunately, information technology has yet to live up to its immense promise in health care­ — a topic that I frequently write about. As somebody who has worked with every single major EHR on my travels, I am being brutally honest when I say not a single one has impressed me. There are huge obstacles to overcome with usability and efficiency. Of equal concern are the morale effects this is having on the hundreds of thousands of physicians toiling away for their patients. At a time of escalating physician burnout and job dissatisfaction, all current studies list the burdens of health care information technology as the number one daily contributor. At the crux of this problem are three fundamental gigantic flaws in how IT has been implemented at the medical frontlines: 1) The end-user of the product is viewed by the IT company as the hospital administration: not the physician (imagine how bad the iPhone would be if they didn’t care about the end-user experience); 2) Most EMRs have been built primarily as giant billing systems rather than patient care systems; and, 3) EMR systems are monopolies once installed and have almost zero incentive to improve after they’ve signed their multi-million dollar contract with the health care organization. Not only are monopolies bad for any kind of progress, but it’s also a very un-American...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Health IT Hospital-Based Medicine Source Type: blogs