Emmott On Technology: Debunking Electronic Health Records Deadline Rumors

Emmott On Technology: Debunking the EHR Deadlines
Thursday, March 7, 2013

Quick, call 911 man the lifeboats, it’s an emergency! The federal government is mandating dentists have electronic records by 2014, next year!

This from the January 21 ADA News, 

“If you believe the rumors, every dentist in the country will have to go paperless by this time next year…The truth is, no dentist is required by the federal government to use electronic health records or implement digital radiography systems by 2014”

Oh, never mind.

Like many federal programs the whole Electronic Medical Records (EMR) thing is confusing. Supposedly you would have to read it to know what is in it but even then it is not clear. What there is, is a lot of confusion, speculation, scare tactics and vendors willing to exploit the confusion in order to sell dubious solutions to dentists. The same as we saw when OSHA and then HIPAA first plagued the dental profession.

Back in 2004, President Bush set a ten year goal for most Americans to be using an EMR by 2014. It wasn’t a mandate it was more of a, wouldn’t it be great if, type of thing. The current administration through the Department of Health and Humans Services (HHS) has made stimulus money available to health care providers who could show “meaningful use” of electronic records.

The stimulus money decreases each year and runs out in 2014. This deadline on the stimulus funds seems to have contributed to the rumor that dentists must be digital by 2014. By the way, the rules are such that there is practically no way a dentist can qualify for any of the stimulus loot.

All of this is made more complicated by the political circus that “healthcare reform” has become. Bureaucrats are working to come up with the actual rules, and there is speculation that some deadline will be imposed. When that will be is anyone’s guess.

Paperless or Electronic Dental Records (EDR) should be part of the complete Electronic Medical Record. Dental health is of course part of overall health, many general medical conditions are important to dentistry and dental conditions affect general health. However, medicine has many more players and much more money at stake than we do in dentistry, and an EDR has become lost in the much larger battle over the creation of an EMR and the definition of “meaningful use.”

As a result the EMR as it is now emerging is not designed to serve patients or physicians but to meet the government regulation for “meaningful use” in order to get some federal dollars. Physicians forced to use the new systems are complaining that the new EMR takes too long and requires things that are not essential or even relevant.

And by require, I mean that the system refuses to allow the user to proceed until the required fields are filled in; fields such as race, preferred language and smoking status. Sure these might be important but do they have to be filled in before you can even get to ask the patient why they have come to see you?

I hope the physicians don’t give up in frustration and throw out the EMR baby with the “meaningful use” bathwater.

There is no emergency. There is no mandate to go paperless. However, don’t wait around for some bureaucrat to tell you what to do. EDR makes sense for many reasons even if the law does not require it.

Paperless records are: faster, more accurate and less expensive than traditional paper records. Adopt paperless records for your office just because it is the right thing to do. The future is coming and it will be amazing!

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