Tuesday, September 03, 2013
EHR “Savings”
Promoters of the electronic health record (EHR) tout cost savings
as one of its benefits.
The August 26 issue of Modern Healthcare reports the
emergence of a new category of health professional called the Medical
Scribe. It seems that doctors find it more
cumbersome to make their notes in digital form than in handwriting and so they
are employing individuals (Medical Scribes) to sit alongside them and enter
their findings and decisions into a computer as they interview and examine
patients.
The article reported the experience of one Dr. Michael
Merry, an Internist/Pediatrician in Freeport, Illinois. Before the EHR he could see 25 to 30 patients
per day. With the EHR that dropped to 20
to 24. Now that he is using a Medical
Scribe, he has “nearly returned to his pre-EHR productivity rate.”
So the “savings” turn out to be negative, consisting of the
addition of the cost of the computer system, the computer software, and the Medical
Scribe.
Having the information available in digital form potentially
may permit savings elsewhere in the care process, but according to the article
Dr. Merry is a member of a group practice and it is hard to see how he or his
group would benefit economically.
It all goes to show the folly of imposing information
technology on an industry that is neither organizationally nor culturally
positioned to benefit from it.
