Margalit Gur-Arie has hit another out of the park on her blog "Health Care Technology". Everyone should read her recent entry entitled "Technology for Onesies-Twosies". See Here.
Her comments are aimed at the almost one half of U.S. physicians who are still in private practice, most of which are in medium or smaller groups.The topic isthe government program to "help"private docs obtain and use electronic health records (EHRs) and its "Meaningful Use" Program which is a carrot and stick approach to get recalcitrant physicians on the program.
Quote:
"Case in point: Meaningful Use is a voluntary program. The maximum
incentive per Medicare physician is equivalent to seeing one more
patient per week. The maximum penalty for a typical Medicare physician
can be recuperated by seeing one more patient per week. The cost of
using a Meaningful Use EHR, in both cash and physician time, far exceeds
one weekly visit. Can someone please enlighten me on why there is no
market (and trust me, there isn’t) for non-government sanctioned
technology that is purposely built to serve doctors? Remember, you own
more than half the market."
Bottom line- signing on to the government subsidy EHR program is not just a bad idea it is much worse than that. Note, the computer programs that are government sanctioned are for the most part not meant to help the physician practice medicine nor to help the patient receive better care.Read her entire article and find out who really benefits.Spoiler- it ain't the patients and physicians.
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