Physicians are notoriously slow in implementing electronic health records (EHRs) within their office systems. The government has been feverishly trying to get doctors to use these systems for some time, but despite assurances of security and ultimately, cost savings, some physicians remain skeptical.
This topic was brought to our attention by Technology Review and their article, “Why Doctors Don’t Like Electronic Health Records.” Even after the Bush administration issued an executive order in 2004 calling for a universal “interoperable health information” infrastructure and electronic health records for all Americans within 10 years, today only a fraction of doctors use electronic patient records. Now the current administration is making an effort to change that, by promising $27 billion in subsidies for health IT, including payments directly to doctors if only they would use EHRs.
Many physicians state fear of administrative costs as a reason to boycott the change. Granted, administrative costs are already extensive for medical practices. One fairly large portion of those administrative costs includes medical coding and ensuring its accuracy. This is something that requires specialized expertise and systems tailored to regulatory requirements. Many widely used tagging systems lack the user friendly interface and may not implement a rigorous ANSI compliant coding subsystem. Access Innovations’ solutions are ANSI compliant and implement state-of-the-art technology to speed tagging and reduce errors. For more information, contact Access Innovations.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
