Physician Interest in the EMR Stimulus

One of my readers sent me an interesting comment about Physician interest in the EMR stimulus:

Personally, I was under the impression that most physicians really didn’t take the time to read such things [like this post about harmful consequences of the Government’s EHR stimulus]…that they’d rather be thumbing through Golfer’s Digest or Conde Nast’s Traveler. It’s become quite clear that, when something comes along such as a government program like this that can affect their bottom-line, ears perk up and attention is paid. Now, if only more would speak up and voice their opinions to HHS…

I’ve started to see a bit of a turn myself on this site and EMR and HIPAA by physicians who aren’t too happy with the EMR stimulus. They’re starting to voice their concerns more and more. Some of them are a bit uninformed. For example, they want a “cost effective product that works” and then they ask why the VA system can’t be expanded for civilian use. I’ve talked a lot before about why the VA system has challenges, especially in ambulatory EMR. However, by starting the conversation about EMR, they’ll learn things like this.

I have a feeling that the lasting legacy of the EMR stimulus will be the increased awareness and interest in EMR. Maybe the government should never spend the $18 billion of EMR stimulus money since they’ve already gotten the desired effect of increasing interest in EMR. If after this much increased interest doctors still don’t want to implement an EMR, then maybe we shouldn’t pay them [force them] to do it.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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