1) The AMA says that the financial benefits of office-based electronic medical records systems are not worth the cost to doctors.
My take: The primary reason why adoption of electric records is so low. The physician takes a tremendous financial risk for little, if any, return on investment. A poor business investment if there ever was one.
Taking the financial hit for the sake of future macro-benefits isn’t a convincing argument to the average, small-practice physician.
2) NYT: “The only real way to tame health care costs is by limiting access to expensive treatments or by requiring affluent Americans to pay for more of their health care.”
My take: I’d also add judicious use of futile care to the list. Unfortunately, anyone proposing these real solutions would never get elected.
So, we’re stuck with non-solutions like covering the uninsured while costs continue to spiral out of control.
3) Robert Jarvik gets canned as the Lipitor spokesperson.
My take: Poor guy. His reputation takes a hit, and his name forever sullied on the web. I wonder if it was worth $1.35 million.
Yes, patients may like doctors to share personal stories. Although Jarvik technically was an M.D., he never practiced medicine and couldn’t write prescriptions.
He was portrayed as an authority when he clearly wasn’t, and people found that objectionable.
4) The government is considering forgiving up to $10,000 in student loans for doctors who practice in areas of need.
My take: A laughably small carrot that won’t change a thing. The average medical school debt is $140,000, and there is significant pressure to repay that expediently. This means practicing in non-rural areas.
Complete loan forgiveness is the only language that will speak to newly graduated doctors.
Related posts:
- Is loan forgiveness enough to convince students to choose primary care?
- Robert Jarvik, the "third option"
- Continuing fire for Robert Jarvik
- The slow adoption of electronic records
- My take: Funding geriatrics, electronic records, CT-cardiac scans
- Is Robert Jarvik a real doctor?
- Skin in the game for electronic records
{ 6 comments }
1. There are no data of macro-benefit of EMR. It is garbage science and rent seeking by Google and Microsoft.
2. Want to save money? Ask a doc. You get 10% off from ending defensive medicine, 25% off from ending pointless end of life tormenting care, another 25% off from getting healthier habits. That’s 60% off without any loss of quality or restriction of access to valid care.
“Complete loan forgiveness is the only language that will speak to newly graduated doctors.”
Give us more, give us more!
More peanuts?
The omniscient Gov also TAXES their loan forgiveness “grants”. Not only is this absurd – they give you money and then take it right back – but it makes the grant amount that much smaller. It is also deplorably deceptive.
“…My take: The primary reason why adoption of electric records is so low. The physician takes a tremendous financial risk for little, if any, return on investment. A poor business investment if there ever was one…”
This is patently false. If physicians try to implement EMR systems themselves they almost almost invariably fail. These failures are the cases which tend to be circulated among other physicians and publicized.
There are virtually universally positive financial returns (on the order of 25-200% annually) and quality of service improvements that EMR implementations engender if the software selected is good and it is professionally implemented. That is the fact not the false hearsay.
The requirements are that physicians have good advice and competent assistance in selecting and implementing an EMR system. There is an excellent open-source product called OpenEMR that requires no software license fees and minimal investment in hardware. The VOE – the physicians office version of the Veterans Affairs VistA system – is also excellent, but not generally appropriate to smaller practices. There are 20 or more excellent commercial products usable by any size of practice.
There is and I Use a EMR Program that is easy to implement and inexpensive.
It’s called Amazing Charts. at Amazingcharts.com I invite any small practice to look it over. generally $1500.00 and $ 500.00 per year for full support and off sight backup
Ken Brown ARNP
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