Physicians wary of adopting an EMR because they think it could get in the way of patient relationships can stop worrying. Designers of today’s best-of-breed EMRs have clearly thought through the natural progression of the patient visit.
As late as mid-2009, the United States still trailed other industrialized countries in regard to physician adoption of EMRs, according to a survey by Commonwealth Fund.
One reason for this may be that older physicians are less likely to use an EMR than younger ones, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control study, but the EMR implementation story involves more than age.
A common fear of EMR adoption is that using an EMR is time-consuming. Many physicians believe that an EMR would interfere with their relationships with patients. A recent Internet Evolution article summarized the problem well:
“Have you ever been ignored by someone who was texting or otherwise engaged in a digital conversation? Did you feel that the person was being rude and unresponsive to you? If your answer to both of these questions is ‘yes,’ then you will understand the real reason why some doctors don’t want to adopt electronic medical records systems (EMRs),” recently blogged an anonymous doctor. “We know instinctively that the human side of medicine—the attentive listening, the visual cues, the continued eye contact, and the careful history and physical exam—is critical to our profession. The problem we have with EMRs is that they often interrupt the sensitive and intuitive parts of what we do. EMRs and other digital ‘tools’ designed to make our work more efficient, may do so at the expense of the human connectedness our patients deserve and need.”
These concerns are valid: It’s every physician’s primary goal to provide the best possible patient care. But EMR use doesn’t have to get in the way of doing so.
“We’re saving time and money, but more importantly, we have much more meaningful interaction with our patients because we don’t have to flip through paper charts…,” says Dr. Thomas Perkins, DO, a partner with the Institute for Athletic Medicine in Auburn Hills, Michigan, which implemented an EMR.
While the fear of altering patient relationships is a good reason to be wary of an EMR, it doesn’t have to be—with the right EMR. An EMR with a highly intuitive interface that requires minimal interaction during a patient consultation, such as gloEMR by gloStream.
“It’s clear to us that gloStream’s product development team really thought through the natural progression of the patient visit,” said Dominick Roto, MD, of Riverview Medical Associates, in Putnam, Connecticut.
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