3 min reading time

An AmericanEHR Partners survey said just 34% of physicians were satisfied or very satisfied with their EHR system in 2014.

I’d say this is bad:
• 72% said EHRs made it difficult to decrease their workload
• 54% complained about higher operating costs
• 43% had not yet returned to their pre-EHR level of productivity

My buddy Marty Kohn, Chief Medical Scientist at Sentrian, told me, “There are many reasons why physicians are unhappy with their EHRs.

EHRs are based on 30-year-old technology and were designed as billing systems, not clinical information systems.

Their inability to work with natural language means the information you need to analyze needs to be put into a structured format (such as dropdown menus or multiple choice boxes). And that means the rich content of your narrative, your encounter with the patient, can never be used.”

I asked, “So how can we get unstructured data to be working properly in an EHR?”

“Well, actually, I founded a company to do that! Thank you for that lead in! We’re working on gaining an understanding of the decision the doctor has to make and extracting from the EHR the information relevant to that decision.

So if you’re dealing with a 65-year-old patient with chest pains, you don’t have to waste time reading about his appendectomy at age 11. It will understand the nature of the question you have and give you a summary of the EHR, relative to that decision.”

Marty’s company is http://medgroup.biz/TellitHealth and you can leave him a note there.

For today’s discussion, have issues with EHR integration hindered your growth in any way?

What are you doing about it?

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USING UNSTRUCTURED DATA

On a related note, Dr. Libbe Englander is giving a talk about using unstructured data at http://medgroup.biz/10x in May.

Her company, Pharm3r, uses Natural Language Processing to analyze vast amounts of medical device data to identify adverse events and product problems.

See her presentation live. Join us in San Diego!

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MEET PAST AND PRESENT CDRH and FDA officials in Rockville, MD (March 15-17)

From FDAnews, see http://medgroup.biz/quality-congress

Now in its 13th year, the Medical Device Quality Congress is a must-attend event for medical device and diagnostics professionals. Pick experts’ brains, absorb their knowledge, and develop invaluable contacts.

Save 20% with Medical Devices Group code MDQC20 at http://medgroup.biz/quality-congress

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PUBLISH YOU?

There’s a new peer reviewed journal launching in April called Telehealth and Medicine Today.

See http://medgroup.biz/tel-health-med

My friend Tory Cenaj asked if we have group members interested in being published. Her audience is hospitals and medical research centers, payers and health economists, healthcare providers, researchers, innovators, and medical directors. Another segment of readers are in biopharm, biotech, and device companies; and IT/IS and academicians.

You can even promote your device in the publication if, through electronic, mechanical, or other means it is used in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of adverse health conditions.

So if you’d like to publish for a digital health and telemedicine readership, visit http://medgroup.biz/tel-health-med

You can also visit the site to get your free subscription.

Good luck, Tory!

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Make it a great week.

Joe Hage
Medical Devices Group Leader

P.S. We sold 20 seats for the 10x Medical Device Conference last week. 60 remain and prices go up March 1. Visit http://medgroup.biz/10x to join us!

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Patricia LyonsBlum
Medical IT Sales Consultant
There is still more room for improvement among all EMR’s.

Marc Timothy Smith
Confidential Business Systems and Standards Specialist
Ah – My mistake. Thanks for straightening me out, Kevin. I should have read closer.

Kevin Morwood
Senior Technical Specialist at University Health Network
He did not say they were running on OLD software but that many instances of NEW software continue to use OLD approaches.

Marc Timothy Smith
Confidential Business Systems and Standards Specialist
Is there an age aspect to the low approval rate? A close friend here works in a major medical group and they find high dissatisfaction by older doctors while the younger ones are faster to embrace some newer technology. The survey sited says “physicians”, which doesn’t account for other people who have to use the software.

Not to mention – There are a LOT of mergers/buy-outs going on. I know another person who works in a large what I call a “medical conglomerate” (ultimately the Catholic hospitals corp). She has a monitor, a keyboard and two computers running different software so she has to use her “A/B” switch to get information from the different systems/software.

I will say that it is totally correct that many places are running VERY old software. It doesn’t surprise me that your buddy buddy Marty Kohn cited it as a reason. I see that in many places, not just medical related.

Christopher Burgess
Executive Director at Woodinville Chamber of Commerce by day Security/Privacy/Intel/National Security writer by night
Never has the term GIGO been more aprapos and dangerous than the healthcare sector. Garbage In – Garbage out — the EHR is where the maximum uptick in collaboration across MDs and care providers, lowering return visits and reducing fraud, yet the lack of universal integration continues to hamper such advances AND it seems few have invested to keep the PHI within the EHR secure (witness the daily breach lists). There is tremendous opportunity for those who have the will to put nose to grindstone.