Low Adoption of Electronic Medical Records: Hidden Reasons?
by Scott MacStravic, World Health Care Blog
June 29, 2007 at 2:14 pm · Filed under Electronic Medical Records
Adopting and particularly sharing EMRs have been major features of most expert suggestions for health care reform. Despite their availability for two decades, their adoption in the US is well behind most European countries, as well as China, Japan, Australia and Russia, at less than 20% compared to 50-90% and more elsewhere. Whatever the benefits of EMRs, to patients, payors, and the country as a whole, we are only slowly and somewhat reluctantly gaining them.
Among the reasons suggested for the slow adoption rate is the sorry state of third-party and consumer payments to providers, compared to the high costs of EMR adoption. A related charge is that our “cottage industry” providers do not seek improvements in quality and productivity for their sakes alone, but look first at what it will do for individual practitioners, personally, financially, and immediately. And most EMR benefits take a while to reach their full potential….
Well, there will be some new models for provisioning soon.
I remain amazed at how we lag behind France and their use of smartcards to drive EMR use.
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