MU Requirements Make a Decent EMR Suffer

If you’ve been missing the deep conversation we’re having in the “Develop Your Own EMR – You’re Still Crazy” thread, you’re missing some good conversation. Here’s one of the comments from Andrew Schechtman, M.D.

I’ve found the MU requirements can make an otherwise decent EMR suffer. For example, I previously used a web-based EMR that implemented an allergy documentation component that met MU requirements but was impossible to use in real-world clinical care. It didn’t allow one to enter a class of drugs (“I’m allergic to sulfas”) only specific agents. It didn’t allow an allergy entry without specifying the type of reaction. As any practicing doc knows, a good chunk of allergies come in as “I don’t know what reaction but my mom told me I’ve been allergic since I was a kid.” It met MU requirements but it was truly unusable. It continued in this unusable state for more than a year. I think it’s fixed now although I no longer use that product.

I’ve seen this from EHR vendors many times I’ve done demos. I’ll ask why something is there and then I’ll realize that it’s to satisfy meaningful use. I’ve often said something very similar about the healthcare billing requirements. EMR software could be so beautiful if it weren’t for insane healthcare billing and other government regulations like meaningful use.

I realize that it’s kind of water under a bridge at this point. Meaningful use is here to stay and the EHR incentive money is too tasty for most doctors and hospitals to ignore. However, I think the meaningful use requirements will eventually create an amazing opportunity for disruption. It will take a number of years for the billions of dollars of EHR incentive money to be spent. Plus, I think we’ll need some sort of healthcare collapse, possibly similar to the real estate collapse, to awaken people to the insane healthcare reimbursement. Both of those could create a tremendous opportunity for an entrepreneur to do something amazing for healthcare.

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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