As we head into the next stage of EHR adoption, now that the meaningful use criteria have been finalized, it's time for health IT advocates to start rallying their physician colleagues to get serious about implementing and deriving value from EHRs.

Eugene Heslin, MD, lead physician at Bridge Street Medical Group in the New York Hudson Valley, is one such physician champion. There's an interesting element about Heslin's story. His six-physician practice has been using EHRs since 2006. In 2009, it joined 10 other practices totaling 237 primary care physicians across 51 sites in the Hudson Valley region in adopting the patient-centered medical home model. Here's the thing: Health IT was used to support the PCMH's approach to care, which required physician office redesign.

The PCMH model is all about coordination of care and communication among a patient's multiple healthcare providers, which could include inpatient, PCP, specialist, skilled nursing facility, and home healthcare. Try getting all the visits and results updated in real time for each provider by paper. If you succeed, no doubt you've expended a lot of time and resources.

There will be other new models of care that will require a more efficient means of communication and sharing of information. Health IT will be the infrastructure that enables that sharing and communication.

Heslin said that the federal incentives can help drive critical mass among his colleagues and create widespread adoption at the community level. Many say that health information exchange is what will make EHRs valuable. Once there's widespread adoption, connectivity is the next step. So it's important to get to critical mass.

Heslin was spot on when he said that we need "to develop efficiencies and logic systems that allow us to rationalize care - to care for our patients using more intelligent tools, more efficiently - and not ration care. Meaningful use moves us in that direction." At a time when demand will far outstrip demand, the industry needs to be more efficient - not at the expense of the patient. Any time you can deliver clinical decision support, a comprehensive view of the patient, just to name a few, you are indeed rationalizing care. Important difference.

The industry needs more advocates such as Heslin to speak concisely and eloquently of the value of EHRs.

Patty Enrado blogs daily at EHRWatch.com.