The 7 Myths of HCIT

In a recent (April 26, 2009) Washington Post article, Tevi Troy offers these “ 5 Myths on Health Care's Electronic Fix-It” 1. Electronic health records will cure our health system. 2. Federal carrots and sticks are the only way to get doctors and hospitals to adopt EHRs. 3. Cost is the only reason the United States has such low adoption rates. 4. Subsidizing EHRs will stimulate the economy or EHR adoption in the short term. 5. We know how much we're investing in this effort to promote health IT. It seems to me that from our HCIT perspective, there are some far more basic myths:

7 Myths

a) Community MPI is easy, straightforward and already done.
b) Assessment of patients’ needs have been adequately standardized and agreed upon.
c) Electronic results (lab, notes, radiology reports) distribution to physicians and patients occurs reliably today.
d) CPOE and eRx are relatively straightforward, involving only the prescriber.
e) Forgetting about EHRs, supporting functions like enterprise-wide, multi-resource scheduling is deployed and in common use, just waiting for EMRs to step in and use them to “coordinate care.”
f) Comprehensive and effective documentation methods, both electronic and manual, are proven, readily available, time-efficient and inexpensive.
g) Billing is a no-brainer; coding comes from heaven and denials rarely occur.

As I outlined in my earlier post regarding the Vowels of Care, there probably is a natural order to how we go about automating aspects of managing healthcare information. Let’s all hope that EHRs really are the next step on the way to curing our health system. Picture above shows an artful depiction of the future, hiding the realities that lie beneath. The fascade is a myth. Taken April 27, 2009 outside of Vendome World Headquarters in NYC.