Hospitals Move to Offering EMRs to Physicians

May 1st, 2008 by Jon Mertz

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In a previous post, I highlighted several healthcare IT perspectives on the Stark Law changes and the impact on EMR implementations through hospitals. A recent article in Inside Electronic Medical Records is an interesting edition to this topic; the article is entitled: Hospitals Take Tentative Start EMR Steps, Struggle with Charging Overhead to Doctors.

A few interesting points in the article:

Different approaches are being taken by hospitals. In the article, one hospital is offering just a single EMR offering to their physicians, and another hospital is offering 3 to 4 EMR application options. The primary reason for the multiple EMR offerings is that “We realized that one size doesn’t fit all.”
Integration is essential. The reason for the one hospital to offer single (hosted) EMR offering to their physicians is so that the patient has one medical record in their system. In the other hospital’s case, clinical integration is still essential. As they stated, “You have to have clinical integration between multiple entities. If you are not sharing data, you are losing the real benefit of EMR.”
EMR certification also plays a role in the selection process by the hospital. In one case, only CCHIT certified EMR vendors are considered.
The amount of the hospital subsidy varies. One hospital is covering 60% of the EMR services while the other seems to be taking advantage of the full allowable amount of 85% of the covered services.
Trust is a factor with physicians. If a physician practice is going to take advantage of a hospital supported EMR, they will need to trust that hospital.

Forward progress? Time will tell which approach will work the best, or it may be that the approaches do vary… select the approach that best fit the needs of the connected healthcare objectives being pursued. As long as everyone involved trusts the objectives, it may work.