GENERATING A RETURN so the government has forced us to turn around a technology overhaul in no time flat and they are being a bit cheap about the reward – what else is new? at the very least, we can implement a system that improves our efficiencies and generates some long-term returns. that’s what this plankwalk into innovation is all about anyway, right? according to the medscape ehr report 2012, a poll of over 20,000 healthcare specialists shows that return to be looking a bit further off than advertised. in fact, more respondents feel their ehr has decreased efficiency than think it has created new efficiencies. just under a third state that the ehr system has had a noticeable negative impact on patient interactions. another study by the mgma suggests that one reason that the noncompliant are still using paper is that 78 percent of them fear a “significant” or “very significant” loss in productivity. BETTER RECORDS, GREATER TRANSPARENCY all this complaining about efficiencies, costs, and returns is too much. ehrs are about creating transparency and accuracy in medical records. We know patient encounters are now devoid of eye contact and marred with form filling. certainly then, the new systems are improving records according to a Himss Analytics report. actually, only 8.2 percent of acute care hospitals have implemented a system for physician clinical documentation. actually, within the ehr system, over 60 percent of all clinical documentation is captured in unstructured narrative forms: big blobs of transcribed text in comment boxes. as it stands, we have got a lot for which to thank the mandate of “meaningful use.” duct tape solutions abound across the healthcare landscape. hurried tech professionals are rushing in solutions left and right, frustrated doctors are misusing 38 hbma billing • may. june.2013 them, and no one is happy. but the government has its reasons for the meaningful use mandates, i am sure. everyone knows the best way to foster innovation and efficiency is for a bureaucracy to order it, right? henry ford and the assembly line? Well, a government mandate, of course! and where would we be without the government forcing google to build a search engine? lost, undoubtedly, unable to find anything. We owe the government so much for forcing innovation on these poor, useless souls. it should not be lost on us that a huge, bloated, overarching government apparatus, itself fraught with inefficiencies, is mandating a process to make something else more efficient. Pot, that’s the kettle calling. the sad truth to ehr implementation is that the healthcare industry was moving towards full implementation of ehrs anyway – because it truly is more efficient. in fact, even under the current mandate, it is possible to defy the odds and create an efficiency-making ehr/emr system, it’s just a lot harder than it ought to be. Marc Oestreich has been passionate about human behavior as long as he can remember. As an undergrad at Indiana University that meant researching consumer behavior and human-computer interaction. As a graduate student at Purdue University it meant doing novel research on human decision-making. Alongside his studies, Marc worked as a usability specialist and site architect at several web firms. After finishing at Purdue, Marc worked as a freelance journalist and landed a job full-time at a political think-tank where he was soon put in charge of all digital marketing. He is now the creative director at Crane + Grey, a sister company to Golden Tech, specializing in digital marketing. Marc can be reached at marc@golden-tech.com. (Meaningful Use Requirements are Less Than Meaningful continued) to see the latest hbma videos on youtube, go to www.youtube.com/hbmabilling
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