A CIO believes that cost of EMRs is not the barrier to EMR adoption. He also says that Physicians in a community are paid on a pay-as-you go basis. So anything that is perceived as a barrier to their daily productivity directly effects their income.
He also believes that EMR Software does make Physicians marginally faster, if they really know how to use them well. The systems have to be usually customized to meet their style of practicing medicine.
Al Campanella who is the CIO at Virtua (a multi-hospital healthcare system headquartered in Marltom, NJ) was recently interviewed by Healthcare Informatics. He also believes that physicians aren't opposed to the concept of EMRs, they just don't want to make less money because of them.
While Physicians do agree fundamentally that structured data, and having electronic availability of data, is very valuable, but it's at the price of slower workflow for them. Al believes that it's really the effects on their personal workflow which is the biggest barrier.
According to Al, productivity will slow down anywhere from three weeks to three months, and then after that providers should be at least on par with pre-electronic days. Many physicians actually improve productivity by approximately 10 percent, to say nothing of all the off hours conveniences.
