With the introduction of Cloud technology in the healthcare industry, several EMR vendors are consistently trying to come up with even more advanced and innovative EMR solutions. After all, who wouldn’t want to capture the market share? Also, given the government’s support in terms of financial incentives, there seems to be an augmenting interest amongst providers to adopt electronic medical records. According to a CDC report, the overall EMR adoption has reached 55% within the country.
While we see a significant amount of physicians willing and able to adopt EMRs, there exists a minority of physicians who tend to oppose the idea of EMR adoption.
“We physicians are not against technological advancements. Of course, they make life simple and work easy. However, there have been instances when EMRs have been a reason of disappointment”, says a Massachusetts based solo practitioner.
Let’s discuss what discourages these physicians to adopt electronic medical records. No doubt, these solutions help physicians extract a patient’s history and relevant information from the database whenever needed; however, with the presence of computer hackers around us there exists a significant probability that privacy may be invaded. As a result, the cliched question ‘how safe is your medical record?’ becomes unavoidable. However, addressing this concern is one of the reasons why established EMR vendors have had their software developers pull up their sleeves. Advanced security features, like biometric access control, data encryption, etc are being integrated within EMRs to eliminate any security threats.
During the initial stage, huge implementation costs is yet another reason why many providers find EMR implementation to be challenging. On top of that, there are some vendors who do not offer free training and hosting. This means additional expenses on part of providers. Also, it is not difficult to understand that adopting unfamiliar technology takes time, and during this process many physicians, unintentionally, digress from their primary concern, which is spending time with the patient. Moreover, in case of any technical problem, the physicians’ focus is diverted to fixing the problem rather than engaging with patients. According to research, many patients have reported that electronic medical records have depersonalized their visits – thereby creating a communication gap between the provider and the physician.
So, now that we know such problems exist, finding a solution is the need of the hour. It could be deduced that as soon as the foregoing problems are addressed, the rate of EMR adoption is likely to improve significantly. After all, EMRs were introduced so that both patients and providers can reap the benefits.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
