FORT LAUDERDALE, FL – The focus was on the physician Monday as the 24th annual Towards the Electronic Patient Record (TEPR) Conference and Exhibition opened at the Greater Fort Lauderdale Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

At an opening session attended by roughly 300 people, C. Peter Waegemann, CEO of the Medical Records Institute, which sponsors TEPR, worked the audience to collect suggestions on how to improve adoption of electronic medical records, how to fund the process and how to guide the Office o the National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology. His goal was to draft an action plan to send to the next president of the United States.

One attendee jokingly suggested that EMRs wouldn’t be generally accepted until the older generation of physicians dies off and the next generation, which has grown up in a world of video games, You Tube and sophisticated computers, takes over. Embedded in that opinion, and evident in many others, was the root of the issue: Make EMRS attractive to physicians, and they will use them.

“I think physicians are the first to use technology when it’s shown very clearly that it improves the quality of care,” one attendee said.

Among suggestions that the government has to set the groundwork for EMR standards, bypassing a patchwork of state initiatives and recommendations, Barry Hieb, of the Gartner consulting firm, said ONCHIT has to set the baseline technology for healthcare information exchange, particularly in large endeavors like RHIOs. Echoing another common theme, he said ONC (Office of the National Coordinator) has to figure out a sustainable financial model for RHIOs and HIEs and stick to that plan.