Why has the health industry historically been so quick to resist movements to jump into the electronic age? Cost barriers? Implementation headaches? Lack of usable solutions? Perhaps all of these items have contributed to the slow adoption of technology within the smaller practices but the software industry has not been helpful in reducing the barriers to entry and educating the end user.
A few weeks ago I was sitting in a seminar hosted by a major health care software development company and listened to a client testimony tell the full room to simply accept that the process of implementing an EHR should be painful and slow for six to eight months. Appalled would be an understatement for my reaction to this testimony but unfortunately it seems to be a consensus for most health care professionals when you start talking about EHR and practice management solutions. This is the fault of the software industry. It is completely unacceptable for a end user to believe that implementation of technology will impede not improve their operations.
My background in software development is not rooted in health care technology but most of my clients would have called security and had me escorted out of the building if I told them my software package was going to be painful to install and not improve business processes post implementation. It is time for the reformation of the health care software industry and impose the standards and requirements the rest of the software development world has apparently been using for years.
More importantly than simply catching up to status quo, I believe that the HITECH stimulus funding will push health care software development to push features and functions beyond the expectations of the end user. Why should the application simply store data? The application should be intuitive and interactive. If ever the software industry had a market for bleeding edge features and functionality, the health care industry is it.
Speech recognition is still very costly for rich functionality. Many EHR systems that offer speech recognition charge $100,000 or more to integrate the module and training the system for each user is yet still another costly burden. Health care IT has an opportunity to push speech recognition to the edge and reduce implementation costs while increasing effectiveness.
Moreover, IT should improve practice management operations and profit margins. Patient evaluations should move more quickly allowing doctors to see more patients without sacrificing care. Systems should automatically notify practice managers when patients are due for checkups or tests based on treatment, diagnosis and lifestyle. Prescription management should have guesswork removed. Systems should auto-interface with other provider records and pharmacy records to aggregate all prescribed medications for a patient so health care providers are better informed.
Providers should remember that anything is possible with software. Be vocal with your requests and ideas and drive development. Write letters to your congressman and women and to HHS. http://www.hhs.gov/feedback.html