Elizabeth Warren Vows to Conduct Antitrust Investigation of EHR Market

Veteran readers of this blog may recall that I have referred to the major EHR vendors, notably Epic and Cerner, as holding a"quasi-monopoly" in the large hospital market and are thus able to exercise substantial leverage over this sector of healthcare (see:Are You an Enterprise or Best-of-Breed CIO? Access to Cash May Make the Difference;Could Apple or Amazon Make a Dent in the Hospital EHR Market?;Consideration of the Organizational and Personal Digital Health Managers of the Future). However, their decisions about EHR design and functionalities may not always be in the best interests of physicians, nurses, and patients. Interoperability comes immediately to mind as an important functionality that has been controversial in the past and attracted the attention of Congress (See:CONGRESS TACKLES EHR WOES, INFORMATION BLOCKING, INTEROPERABILITY). I have blogged extensively about this topic (see, for example:Judith Faulkner, EMR Interoperability, and Washington IT Politics;More on Epic's (Non)-Interoperability and the Recent NYT Puff Piece;NYT Op-Ed on EHR Interoperability Blames Vendors and Greedy Hospitals;Faulkner Touts"Interoperability" at Annual Epic Users Conference). I need to interject here that, in my opinion, Judith Faulkner's past opposition to interoperability did align with that of a number of health system CEOs who feared that EHR interoperability could provide an incentive for patients to"shop around" for their hospital c...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Information Technology Hospital Executive Management Medical Consumerism Public Health Source Type: blogs