Saturday, October 26, 2013

Dealing with EHR Dissatisfaction (Part 1)

For the past few days, I’ve been involved in a very good conversation at LinkedIn HIMSS titled: Can we turn EHR dissatisfaction around?

Here’s a comment from person that struck a chord:
It took the doctor 2 minutes to dictate as opposed to 30 minutes to use speech, edit and/or type. In addition, if the text is not edited in most cases except for those of you have it down perfect, you get crappy documentation that is (oh my goodness) actually used down the road to treat a patient. I can also introduce you to several law suits filed due to the poor documentation of a physician who refused to edit his dragon speech and just let it go into the chart. I can also introduce you to a neurologist who spends 4 ADDITIONAL HOURS a day documenting in an EHR. He has been at it for over a year so apparently this brain surgeon is an idiot who can't be trained. All of your responses to this, even the "this is off topic" are very revealing as to one source of the problem. Like typical programmers, no one wants to hear they have a bad design or the product actually needs more work.
So, to stay on topic, "Can we turn it around?" yes but only when you listen to the experts in the field you are dealing with - medical record specialists and physicians - they seem to be the people you have left out of the equation.
I'm a clinician (clinical psychologist) and HIT software inventor/architect/developer with 33 years’ experience in both areas. What I've noticed is that programmers routinely rely on healthcare subject matter experts regarding product content, the same is often not true regarding workflow adaptation, usability and usefulness issues.
It's relatively easy to create databases and forms for data entry and presentation, but it's quit difficult to construct the inputs and outputs in ways that streamline workflows, integrate and organize complex interdisciplinary data in clinically meaningful manner, generate clinically useful information that supports decisions at point of care, and present that information in ways that promote knowledge and understanding that lead to greater value for the consumer/patient.
Herein lies the problem, imo, and it is where disruptive innovation is sorely needed!
Unfortunately, such creative destruction is often hindered by governmental regulatory capture in which big bucks direct the regulators who dictate the rules that constrain innovation, focus on appeasing big business, and drive up complexity and cost.
A short while later, Randall Oates, MD posted a comment that ended with:
It is time for more enlightened physicians to step up and assist/collaborate the transitions to processes generating EHR notes that are more clinically useful, while meeting basic billing/legal/reporting needs of others as well. Otherwise, physicians have to mainly blame themselves for systems that don't meet their needs.
To that I replied:
Randal, I'd to add to your excellent statement: "...and present, in a concise integrated view, the relevant interdisciplinary information needed to support their clinical decisions, at point of care, that is focused on continually improving outcomes and care value.
For past year and a half, I've been volunteering my time in a Federal workgroup (WG) called the 360X initiative and work alongside Cerner, Epic, and several other large EHR vendors and HIEs on implementing closed-loop referrals. In the WG, I'm a "little guy" offering novel ideas and methods to the "big guys."
I sincerely believe that the clinical and technical folks in the workgroup do want to improve their products, despite the fact that I have had to repeatedly insist that instead of focusing on doing the minimum; we focus on dealing with the big, complex issues, especially regarding workflows.
I'm also involved in several other Fed workgroups that create HIT meaningful use standards. What I've noticed is a general tendency to keep things complicated, while at the same time, minimizing the scope of their efforts. Many times, when I’ve tried “push the capabilities bar” higher--and even offered innovative ways to do it)--I’ve heard the phrase: “We should first crawl and then walk before we try to run.” Unfortunately, after all these years, when it comes to enhancing EHR systems' clinical usefulness and security, there's too much crawling under the "low bar," and a general aversion to trying to "leap over the high bar."
I believe there are many reasons for this and they mostly relate to the “business layer” supported through regulatory capture by HHS/ONC.
After three decades of HIT involvement, I’ve come to the conclusion that what we need is to transform EHR products into “EHR systems” (a term I helped add to the Fed’s lexicon and workgroup charters). These EHR systems would be enhanced through integration with low cost, easy-to-use “companion applications” that fill in gaps in EHR usability, usefulness, interoperability, and protection of PHI.
The companion apps are likely to be disruptive innovations created by loosely-coupled collaborative networks of small nimble companies and individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences, who share, discuss, evaluate, and continually evolve models (types of apps) focused on different use cases and types of end-users.
 [Continued in Part 2 at this link]

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