#eHealth100, Single EMR, EMR Adoption, and Wrong EMR Decision

You know what time it is if the post begins with a hashtag. That’s right. We’re taking a quick look at some of the interesting, insightful, fun, entertaining, beautiful or otherwise thought provoking tweets related to EMR and EHR.

We’ll lead off with a tweet nomination to the #eHealth100:


Yes, I was happy that Anneliz thought of me with this tweet nomination. Although, I must admit that I wasn’t sure what I was being nominated for, so I asked and got the following response about the goal of the #eHealth100


I appreciate being mentioned in this group. Considering the many people that make up the healthcare world, I just hope that each day I can make a small difference in people’s lives. It’s a beautiful thing when I can do that and provide for my family at the same time.


I love and hate the sarcasm in Dr. May’s tweet. I love the irony, but hate that it seems to be a major medical breakthrough.


I’m always looking for more numbers on EMR adoption. Although, then I realized that the article is from Venture Beat. Unfortunately, the people at Venture Beat don’t follow healthcare IT and especially EHR very well (they do follow other startups well). This can be seen in their reference to ZocDoc and Castlight as EHR companies likely to go public. They might go public, but they are definitely not EHR companies. I also love that they also have a quote saying that 90% of doctors don’t have an EMR which totally contradicts the CDC EMR adoption numbers they put at the beginning.

The long story short: 1. Don’t read Venture Beat for healthcare IT info. 2. We don’t really know how we’re doing with EHR adoption. We just know EHR adoption is on the rise.


I’ve sadly been predicting major EMR switching for a year or more. There are a number of reasons for this, but I’d say the biggest driver of EMR switching is thanks to the EHR incentive money and meaningful use.

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.

9 Comments

  • Fun post! I’d be interested in a flesh-out of your final point: “I’d say the biggest driver of EMR switching is thanks to the EHR incentive money and meaningful use.”

    I handle government affairs at athenahealth, and one of the primary policy points we make in our DC advocacy is that a major unintended consequence of MU incentives has been de facto subsidy of obsolete EMR technologies. Docs rush-shopping for HIT end up spending buckets of money (their own and the government’s) on static software based systems that are obsolete almost from the moment of go-live – and not surprisingly they soon go looking for a replacement.

    We just saw an 85% attestation rate for stage 1 among our providers. That compares to a 27% average nationwide. That is a significant delta, made possible not because we try so hard (though we do!), but because our cloud-based technology is at home in the 21st century.

    Sorry to pontificate… Would be interested, as I said, in a flesh-out of that last point.

  • Dan,
    I think there are a whole list of things in the HITECH act which encourage and promote the use of outdated technologies. I’m sure this is something you agree with and know all about as well.

    My core argument has been, sure we’re seeing an increase in EHR adoption. However, what if the EHR incentive money is incentivizing doctors to adopt the wrong EHR. By wrong EHR I mean one that they don’t like, that can’t adapt to changing technology, that can’t support the future Smart EMR requirements that are bound to come, that kill a physician’s workflow, that cause a doctor to not want to be a doctor, etc.

    I think we may be headed this direction and the number of doctors switching EHR software is a decent example of why this is the case. I’m sure that some would argue that meaningful use is driving people to switch EHR software and that the switch we’re seeing happening is from EHR software that isn’t highly functional to EHR software that is highly functional.

    While this argument is true in some cases, there are just as many cases which illustrate that the EHR switching was because their first MU EHR was such a terrible experience that they had to switch EHR. Plus, we’re just at the start of this. Many are painfully grinding through the day to day with an EHR they hate. Wait until that explodes.

    Even worse is those clinics that are switching EHR for the sake of EHR incentive money and go from an EHR they enjoy to one they hate. Add in the many doctors who are stuck using an EHR that was selected by some large company who didn’t worry too much about the physician needs and we’re in for a crazy next couple years.

    Hopefully this gives you a better idea where my comment was coming from. Needless to say, I’m not sure that HITECH has been a benefit to doctors. The short term numbers might look good, but it might have just created some painful underlying difficulties going forward.

    With all of this said, there are some beautiful EHRs out there that make doctors lives better. I’m pro-EHR when it’s done right. I just don’t see meaningful use and EHR incentive promoting the right EHR adoption methods.

  • […] my recent look around the EMR twittersphere on EMR & EHR, I briefly commented on the challenges of choosing the wrong EMR and EMR Switching. Dan Haley from athenaHealth asked for some deeper clarification of my comment, “I’d say the […]

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