I’m out of town now at a leadership retreat. So, I decided I’d pose a question and hopefully a number of people will leave comments with their thoughts on the subject. Now for the question:
What type of impact will the most recently passed “healthcare reform” bill have on EMR adoption and use?
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.
Healthcare Reform will flood the system with 32 million more patients in search of healthcare. These newly insured patients plus the 79 million aging baby boomers, the first of which will turn 65 next year, will mean that only the practices that can successfully manage the tidal wave of new patients AND provide enhanced patient care WHILE increasing physician productivity and office and clinical workflow efficiencies will survive and emerge as winners. Those EMR companies that enable physicians to achieve these goals will also be the winners.
Evan’s right about the “tidal wave” aspect, but it will be a slow-motion wave since it will take a few years before the 32 million are added to plans, and baby-boomers of this generation may be somewhat healthier than those of the past (speculation, but probably the correct trend).
Another incentivizing item in the legislation includes the requirement for physicians to participate in PQRI or face reductions in Medicare payments; this is much easier in an EMR environment. There are also grants to increase use of EMR systems in long-term care facilities and incentives for payers and providers to use IT to improve healthcare outcomes.
These things are not quite as dramatic as direct incentives for meaningful use, but every little bit will help!