These two topics don’t necessarily go together, but they were both short and sweet thoughts I’d written down at one of the many healthcare IT events that I’ve attended this Fall (Thankfully I don’t have any travel on my schedule until HIMSS).
Here’s the first one that was said by an EHR vendor:
“Not All ICD-10 Are Created Equal”
Obviously the idea here is that this EHR vendor believes that his EHR has produced a higher quality ICD-10 engine than many of the others he’s seen on the market. It’s interesting that an ICD-10 engine could be so different when the output is exactly the same (a number). Although, when you get into the complexities of how a doctor may go about finding the right ICD-10 code, it makes more sense. Maybe we need to have an ICD-10 lookup challenge with each EHR vendor at HIMSS 2013. Would be interesting to see the results.
This next one was an interesting insight info one of the side effects of meaningful use on EHR adoption. This came from a former hospital CIO and current hospital EHR consultant who said, “There’s no time to optimize as you go anymore, because you have to get to meaningful use to get the EHR incentive money.”
I wonder how many others have seen this change as well. I’ve no doubt seen the rush to implement EHR in order to show meaningful use and get access to the government money for EHR. It’s just unfortunate to think that the process is rushed by the dangling carrot. Rushing an EHR implementation can lead to very bad results in the long term. Many EHR users will be dissatisfied. EHR does not solve bad workflows. In fact, it often accentuates whatever bad workflows may exist.
