Bernie Monegain, Editor
Bernie Monegain is the Editor of Healthcare IT News. Bernie covers hospitals and IDNs, industry trends and is responsible for overall coverage decisions.
Docs slow to engage patients with IT
WASHINGTON | February 27, 2012
A new study by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions indicates physicians are not using IT broadly to engage patients. No more than 20 percent of doctors are providing online scheduling or test results for their patients and just 6 percent are using social media to communicate with them, according to Deloitte.
[See also: Stage 2 rule means lost year of interoperability, coalition says]
The report, “Physician Perspectives on Health Information Technology,” shows that measured against the IT goals and deadlines prescribed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, only 25 percent of physicians are “on target” to meet the meaningful use incentives.
Doctors, however, are more confident about being able to satisfy the mandate to upgrade their medical billing and coding systems to comply with ICD-10 coding. Just 21 percent reported they would not be able to meet the Oct. 1, 2013 deadline. However, 62 percent of physicians cited managing ICD-10 documentation as a “major concern.”
Deloitte polled 501 physicians obtained as a random sample from the American Medical Association’s (AMA) master file of physicians. The responses were weighted by years in practice according to gender, region and practice specialty to reflect the national distribution of physicians in the AMA master file.
[See also: HHS touts big strides in health IT adoption]
Harry Greenspun, MD, senior adviser for the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions and lead author of the report, says some parts of the survey demonstrate that physicians accept the value of health IT. Two-thirds of doctors say they use some form of electronic records to manage clinical information and a similar number believe IT can improve care long term.
“The voice of physicians today seems to have two components: one that accepts the value of information technology to improve quality and safety of care and another that expresses concern over its cost and potential to disrupt how they practice,” says Greenspun. “This dissonance is one reason why IT is not further entrenched in our healthcare system.”
However, Greenspun says he believes physicians will more readily adopt IT over the next two years as pressures mount to demonstrate value around evidence-based care, improved outcomes and reduced complications.
“Greater accountability will compel providers to a greater reliance on data, requiring that it be collected electronically, shared appropriately and analyzed methodically,” he said. “The key is to bring IT to the medical community in a way that enhances care while minimizing the costs and disruptions involved in implementation.”
Key findings from the report:
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Gil Pizano say: Weighing in on Docs being slow to engage patients with IT
February 28, 2012 | 12:51 PM GMT
Very insightful article!
The Deloitte Center for Health Solution’s study outlines areas that I’m sure many readers here have suspected as being quite widespread. Harry Greenspun’s comment on how the voice of today’s physician are really in two parts and how “one that accepts the value of information technology to improve quality and safety of care and another that expresses concern over its cost and potential to disrupt how they practice” is one that is particularly interesting. Why? Because such views have been part of the business model thought process since business of any type began. There are many practitioners who went into the medical field in order to help others. Still others went into the medical field simply due to the lure of a higher income bracket. Regardless of the reason, the medical field is a business and with all businesses, there will be the pressure to grow/adapt in order to simply survive as a business. Part of those pressures is in the need more readily allow patients the ability to engage with their medical provider. With the importance of a medical practitioner having easy access to a patient’s medical record (in order to make a more informed medical decision) becoming more apparent in the public eye, more and more medical professionals will be forced to update their technologies to also include ways to engage their patients. By doing so, a patient will feel more empowered than they would otherwise. Medical providers, who choose not to allow patients to engage them in multiple ways, but only a few ways, do not understand where the field is moving towards. If a person feels more engaged, they are often more satisfied. If more people are satisfied with a medical provider’s services (overall) they are more likely to keep going back and/or recommend the same service provider to others.
The concern of the widening technology divide and the losing touch with the broader issues should not be as much of an issue wherever there is good, strong leadership within an organization. A similar issue to the widening technology divide concern was seen in the financial arena and that is how that arena came across a set of recommendations that are widely used today called with GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). The medical field is always in need of strong, intelligent and collaborative leaders who will help medical practices and other such organizations adapt the required technologies to stay in business, let alone thrive.
Mary Wessinger say: Federal Mandates
in conversations with many of the docs I work with, many are concerned over confidentiality. Once data is on computers, it can be accessed by many, what happens if some of the data is wrong, a DX or HX is incorrect, than once it is in the system, you can't correct it. The concept of "one shoe size does not fit all feet" applies here.
All patients are different with different histories. Many patients are not computer literate and do not care to be.
This is a very expensive undertaking, I have heard pts complain that all we are is a number on a computer, why doesn't the doctor and nurses talk with me any more, all they do is sit in front of a computer and type things in, they do not communicate with ME. Remember is there any example of when the Federal Government took over any entity and "regulated it" where it was sucessful and where the expenses went down, No it has always been eventually destroyed and became less effective and efficient and more costly. IT does not solve all problems, nor does it create better health care.