One big reason why electronic medical records are not taking off

Credit: Digital Cat via Flickr

Last week the New York Times reported on a new analysis from the RAND Corporation that indicates that a multi-year push towards electronic medical records (EMRs) by the federal government hasn't delivered expected efficiencies and cost savings. The report specifically focused on improvements predicted in a 2005 RAND report on the advantages of EMRs. RAND and the New York Times both note that healthcare costs have gone up since the government began pushing for electronic records via the 2009 HITECH Act rather than down as was expected with EMR adoption.

Both RAND and the Times recount a litany of common arguments as to why EMRs haven't become the norm and haven't delivered on the expected promises.

In an abstract of the report, RAND points the finger at a handful of factors.

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• Sluggish adoption of health IT systems
• The choice of systems that are neither interoperable nor easy to use
• The failure of healthcare providers and institutions to reengineer care processes

The Times also assigns blame to a focus on billing over service in EMR adoption saying that "available systems seem to be aimed more at increasing billing by providers than at improving care or saving money."

Having worked in health IT, I can say that there is some merit to each of these points, particularly when it comes to providing interoperability between solutions.

Having said that, both publications miss a key point that I'll call "the consumerization of healthcare technology." Simply put, that means that healthcare IT, like IT departments across every other industry, is in an unprecedented state of flux because of consumer technologies entering the workplace. In fact, adoption of consumer-oriented mobile devices has been bigger and more rapid in healthcare than in other industries.

Within days of the iPad launching in 2010, many doctors began trying to see how they could integrate the tablet into their workflows whether that meant in a hospital, private practice, or other care setting. The iPad quickly became the mobile device of choice among doctors, followed by the iPhone. Smartphones of all types quickly became favored reference and treatment tools of nurses, whether officially allowed or not. It was seen as a forgone conclusion that the smaller form factor of the iPad mini and similar smaller tablets would appeal to healthcare professionals because of the ability to easily stick one in a lab coat pocket.

All of this happened as the requirements of the HITECH Act, which was passed into law in 2009, began providing significant financial incentives for medical providers and facilities to adopt EMRs. That should have created a perfect storm of EMR adoption, but it hasn't.

One major reason relates to RAND's assumption that doctors and other providers haven't reengineered their processes for technologies like EMRs. Another way to consider the situation is that EMR providers didn't reengineer their products to match the technologies that doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers have been adopting in droves -- iPads, iPhones, Android smartphones, and Android tablets.