Should physicians nearing retirement deploy EHRs?

One of the lesser discussed factors determining whether to adopt EHRs or not is the number of years that a physician who owns his or her practice has left before retirement.

This is a complicated issue, and the advice will vary from physician to physician, given his or her specific circumstances. There are, however, a few common facts that need to be taken into consideration.

As one healthcare consultant noted, putting in an EHR system in the office doesn’t instantly deliver value. It’s – rightly – what you do with the system. And that will require time, likely years, to reap the benefits of improved clinical outcomes of patients and perhaps derive new sources of revenues (such as charging agencies to send out data, etc.). The question is whether the physician has the time to develop value or meaningful use out of the EHRs.

There will be immediate benefits, such as data retrieval automation, which can cut down on office staff time doing low-priority tasks. Intangible benefits may surface in the form of increased patient satisfaction when appointments can be scheduled via e-mail or test results received electronically without staff intervention and time.

Another benefit is the elimination of duplicative tests, but until the fee-for-service model is replaced, this particular benefit is lost revenue for physicians. Although the industry is beginning to embrace such models as bundled payments and payments tied in with medical homes, the timeline for when we are completely rid of fee for service is fuzzy at best. Will the physician retire before that happens? If retirement is less than five years away, I’d say it’s unlikely we’ll see payment reform.

Choosing the most cost-efficient system and a vendor that guarantees achieving meaningful use criteria may remove some of the discomfort and uncertainty over the major changes. Certainly physicians should reach out to their local regional extension centers (RECs) to help with implementation and workflow and office reengineering.

The healthcare consultant made a number of good points. It’s not the end of the world if the physician’s practice does not have an EHR since many larger organizations have their own and simply have that acquired practice implement the system that they use. That’s what happened to my physician’s office, although the acquisition occurred more than five years ago, which was at a time when EHRs weren’t a hot issue, as they are now.

At any rate, David Blumenthal, MD, said that in the near future adopting health IT will be part of the cost of doing business and part of the profession. Who knows when that will be? But when that time does arrive, it may just matter who is fully using EHRs and who is not.

Source : http://www.ehrexperts.us/should-physicians-nearing-retirement-deploy-ehrs/