Pediatricians Find EMRs Lacking

While there’s no lack of specialty EMRs out there, it seems that pediatricians feel undeserved anyway. In fact, a new study suggests that there are five functions pediatricians look for in EMRs which are seldom found in a single system.

Almost half of pediatricians have adopted EMRs (48.5 percent), and 61.7 percent of doctors in internal medicine/pediatrics, according to a report in American Medical News.  (The data was drawn from marketing research firm SK&A, which does ongoing surveys on EMR adoption and use at 250,000-odd practices nationwide.)

The study, which appears in this month’s issue of the journal  Pediatrics, reports on a random survey of 646 postresidency pediatricians done in 2009 before the MU incentive program began. At the time, only 3 percent were using an EMR that they considered fully-functional and supportive of their specialty.

The authors say that pediatricians need five key features in place to consider an EMR complete. These include tracking of well-child visits, support of growth chart analysis, immunization tracking, immunization forecasting and weight-based drug dosing. Unfortunately, Meaningful Use standards  are nowhere near addressing the entire bundle of functions, they note.

So, are there any solutions for pediatricians which have emerged since the study survey was done? Certainly, there are scads of EMRs out there being marketed as pediatric EMRs. However, at first glance at least, most of the market for pediatric EMR solutions seems to be general  purpose systems offering pediatrics-specific templates.

On the horizon, however, there may be a glimmer of hope. Apparently, the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research has designed a model children’s EMR which includes a list of child-specific functions, and ONC anticipates including these features in future stages of the EMR certification criteria.

In the mean time, it looks like pediatricians face the need to either work with (arguably) inefficient systems or customize systems on their own. Neither possibility would sound good if you were a pediatrician, would it?

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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