Doctors Claim EHRs Do Not Save Money or Time

A recent survey claims that 75% of physicians in the United States who use electronic health records (EHRs) say they are not cost- or time-effective, but do have value in terms of providing data.

The Deloitte (New York, NY, USA) 2014 Survey examined US physicians’ current use and overall views of mobile health (mHealth) technologies, Meaningful Use (MU), and electronic health records (EHRs). The online survey included 561 physicians, selected from the American Medical Association (AMA) master file of physicians, with the data weighted to reflect national US distribution by years in practice, gender, region, and medical specialty; the survey's margin of error is plus or minus 3.89%.

The survey found that while 75% of the respondents using EHRs believed that they actually increase costs, 70% said they provide useful analytics and 60% believed EHRs support value-based care. The survey identified security and privacy as important concerns among all physicians, whether or not they used EHRs. In addition, 90% of doctors were interested in mHealth applications; the 10% of physicians who were not interested in mHealth applications tended to be older, to be in solo or independent practice, and to have been in practice the longest.

Of the 24% of physicians who were already active mHealth users, about half used mobile health applications daily, with 43% of respondents saying that the security and privacy of protected health information was a constraint of mobile health, including 50% of mHealth users and 41% of nonusers. On the other hand, only 38% of physicians felt that being able to monitor patients' conditions and their treatment adherence was a benefit of mHealth, compared with 60% of consumers who were interested in using the technology for doing so.

The survey also asked physicians how far along they were in terms of complying with MU objectives for EHRs. A total of 56% said they were at Stage 2 of meaningful use; of those, 71% planned to go on to Stage 3. Another 26% of respondents were at Stage 1, while 18% said they had not started on MU requirements yet. Most physicians didn't think meaningful use increased productivity, and 58% said it has not distinguished their practice from other practices as far as patients are concerned. In addition, 48% said MU does not support care coordination.

“The take-home message is that we still have work to do to optimize EHR implementation,” said Mitch Morris, MD, national leader for Deloitte’s health care provider sector, in an interview with MedPage Today. “People were under the gun with meaningful use […] Many drove hard to get things in by the deadline but didn’t think hard about how to leverage the technology to improve workflow, improve safety and quality, and have a positive impact on clinicians as well as on patients.”

Meaningful Use refers to healthcare information technology (HIT) goals set by the Obama Administration, using federal financial incentives to stimulate the market of EHRs to improve care and healthcare coordination, reduce healthcare disparities, encourage population and public health policy implementation, and ensure adequate privacy and security. MU implementation will be rolled out in three stages until 2015.

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