SAN DIEGO – Healthcare IT does not necessarily make life easier for primary care physicians, says a leader in the movement to make medicine more efficient and patient-centered.

"When you put an EMR into a primary care practice, your life is hell for the next year," said L. Gordon Moore, MD. "EMR vendors aren't really giving us what we need. We have to make a distinction between a robust EMR with decision support tools, and one that is just being marketed as a way to improve coding. And we really need to get out of the E&M coding game."

Moore spoke Thursday at the 2008 Scientific Assembly of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He did not mince words when discussing the faults of contemporary U.S. healthcare, and the subsequent burdens placed upon primary care physicians.

"Beware of the monolithic, expensive IT vendor, because there are always things they don't do well," Moore said. "The whole thing can be a Ponzi scheme. The only ones making money from most of these products are the vendors selling them."

"We just can't wait until 2010 for the rollout of the patient-centered medical home," said Moore. "We need revolutionary change in our industry. Incremental changes will not work"

Moore has been intimately involved in the growth of the "Ideal Medical Practices Project," an effort to make efficient primary care practices that serve as "medical homes" to patients the core of medical care in the United States.