Healthcare Innovation Council Cites 2 Reasons Why EHRs Fail to Deliver

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The Healthcare Innovation Council, an independent group of healthcare experts  has urged Congress to re-examine the direction of the Meaningful Use program, stating that it is not improving patient care. The commentary entitled, “Lets Admit the Emperor has No Clothes-It’s Time to Redesign EHRs to Improve Patient Care” was submitted by six US Senators in response to a report released by six Republican senators on April 16th.

According to the council, the current breed of EHRs is causing a “massive disruption of providers’ patient care focus as they chase meaningful use dollars” leading to severe financial burdens on EHR hardware and software by healthcare providers. Thus far, CMS has spent over $12.7 billion of EHR stimulus incentives.

The commentary outlined 2 “root cause” reasons why EHRs are failing to deliver on their promises:

1. EHR Design Issues
EHRs, to date, have been fundamentally designed to create  electronic versions of paper medical records. EHRs focus on data collection  mostly for regulatory compliance and financial reporting, not to assist physicians, nurses and other clinicians in providing higher quality more efficient patient care. As a result, the EHRs are not designed to reflect or facilitate the way in which providers deliver patient care, and thus disrupt, rather than enhance, patient care.
2. EHR Implementation Issues
EHR implementations are often led as IT “projects” by teams that do not obtain robust, meaningful, future-focused input/involvement from nurses, physicians, pharmacy and other clinicians who provide patient care. The end result typically is that EHR implementations don’t make life better for EITHER the clinician or the patient. Sadly, more often than not physicians, nurses and other clinicians find EHRs make it more, rather than less, difficult to provide better patient care.
A copy of the Council’s commentary can be found here

Formed by Anthelio Healthcare Solutions Inc. in 2011, the Council’s members are:

  • Robert Burns, PhD, MBA: Chair of the Health Care Management Department at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Director of the Wharton Center for Health Management and Economics Hud Connery, MHA: CEO of iVantage, a healthcare data analytics company; former founder and CEO of Essent Healthcare, a for profit hospital company
  • Kevin Hickey: Founder and Principal with HES Advisors, a consultancy to healthcare growth companies; former executive roles with Oxford Health Plans, Aetna, Lincoln National and MetLife
  • Julie Klapstein: Former founding CEO and Vice Chair of Availity, a health information network; board member of Annies Organics, Standard Register, Dominion Diagnostics and Akal
  • Rick Kneipper: CEO (Interim), Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, and Co-Founder of Anthelio Healthcare Solutions
  • Jack Lord, MD: Former COO of University of Miami Health System; former CEO, Navigenics; former SVP and Chief Innovation Officer, Humana Inc.; and former COO, American Hospital Association
  • John McConnell, MD: CEO, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center; EVP for Health Affairs, Wake Forest University; Professor of Urology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine; former EVP for Health System Affairs at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; elected to Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Sharon Riley: Former CEO of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center University Hospitals; former COO of Anne Arundel Medical Center; former COO of University of Nebraska Medical Center; Board member of Heska Corp.; Senior Advisor to DigiWorks
  • MaryAnn Stump, RN, MBA: Former SVP, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, BlueCross and Blue Shield of Minnesota; External Advisory Board, Yale College of Nursing; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow National Advisory Board

 Image credit: nffcnnr via cc

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