FORT LAUDERDALE, FL – With the 24th Annual Towards the ElectronicPatient Record Conference and Exhibition under its belt, the MedicalRecords Institute will now turn its attention to planning for itssilver anniversary 2009 conference in Palm Springs, Calif.
More than 2,000 people attended last month’s event, which was billed asthe “best ever.” It was held at the Greater Fort Lauderdale BrowardCounty Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The focus, as always,was on the electronic health record – a record that can boostcontinuity of care because it will follow the patient everywhere.
One of the first sessions highlighted physician uptake of the EHR.
C. Peter Waegemann, CEO of the Medical Records Institute, worked theaudience of about 300 attendees to collect suggestions on how toimprove adoption of EHRs, how to fund the process and how to guide theONC – the Office o the National Coordinator for Healthcare InformationTechnology. His goal was to draft an action plan to send to the nextU.S. president.
One attendee jokingly suggested that EMRs wouldn’t be generallyaccepted until the older generation of physicians dies off and the nextgeneration, which has grown up in a world of video games, You Tube andsophisticated computers, takes over.
Embedded in that opinion, and evident in many others, was the rootof the issue: Make EMRS attractive to physicians, and they will usethem.
“I think physicians are the first to use technology when it’s shownvery clearly that it improves the quality of care,” one attendee said.
Among suggestions that the government has to set the groundwork forEMR standards, bypassing a patchwork of state initiatives andrecommendations, Barry Hieb, of the Gartner consulting firm, said theONC has to set the baseline technology for healthcare informationexchange, particularly in large endeavors like RHIOs. Echoing anothercommon theme, he said the ONC has to figure out a sustainable financialmodel for RHIOs and HIEs and stick to that plan.
A few physicians said it was critical to keep the “eye-to-eye” contact between a doctor and his or her patient.
