Most Doctors Don’t Meet U.S. Push for Electronic Records
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-03/most-doctors-don-t-meet-u-s-push-for-electronic-records.htmlFewer than 1 in 10 doctors used electronic records last year to U.S. standards, according to a survey that shows the challenge facing a multibillion-dollar effort to digitize the health system for improved patient care.
Only 9.8 percent of 1,820 primary-care and specialty doctors said they had electronic systems that met U.S. rules for “meaningful use,” a list of tasks such as tracking referrals or filling prescriptions online. Less than half all those surveyed, or 44 percent, had any system in place, according to the report published by the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
The Obama administration has spent about $15 billion since 2009 to help doctors and hospitals adopt electronic health records, fueling growth for vendors such as McKesson Corp. (MCK) and Cerner Corp. (CERN) In March, the administration said it was considering new regulations, amid complaints that the systems are hard to use and don’t share information easily.
The survey “ should be of concern to policy makers,” said the authors, led by Catherine M. DesRoches of Mathematica Policy Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Significant progress needs to be made before such systems are believed to be usable by most physicians.”
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Somehow those vendors managed to find my doc's lil clinic in this out of the way Mayberry lil town.
And the outpatient office visit cost doubled.
Now if only they had trained the docs and staff how to use the computer program.
Or the pharmacy staff that is supposed to get the prescription from the doc's computer.
( Can you say "FUBAR'?)
Or the hospital's outpatient services clinic that does mammograms, and which insisted, on my follow up appt.,
that according to their computers, I had never been there 6 months earlier for the tests I was following up on.
"Yes, we see you are here for a follow up visit, ordered by your doctor, but we have no record of you getting any tests 6 months ago" said the nice young thang, peering into the puter screen.
Which reminds me, I gotta call Medicare, who paid for that non-existent visit.
