EMR Deployment as One of the Catalysts for a Hospital-Physician Feud

The relationship between hospital executives and the physicians admitting patients to community hospitals has been undergoing significant changes lately. The deployment of an EMR in a hospital, particularly one not appealing to physicians, is one such change than can flare into outright warfare. Below is an excerpt from an article discussing such a scenario (see: from HIStalk):

Re: articles in Racine, WI paper about All Saints. Doctors are not happy with administration and a number may leave.” Doctors and administrators are feuding, with a third of the medical staff ready to bolt. The final straw, apparently, was the hospital’s contracting with a Florida anesthesia company, replacing a local group after failing to reach an agreement about pay, on-call policies, and the use of nurse anesthetists. Also noted as a key issue: the 2009 introduction of an EMR system, which the doctors complain wasn’t well supported.

The hospital business model that has dominated the landscape, at least throughout the last half of the previous century, is now undergoing substantial change. One highly significant shift for community physicians has been the trend toward hiring hospitalists to manage hospital inpatients. I am not sure how the majority of community physicians view this change. Some may, in fact, favor it and feel more comfortable managing their office-based ambulatory care practices. What is certain, however, is that many of the office-based physicians have now lost the knack of performing a number of common hospital procedures such as lumbar punctures. One subset of hospitalists, the proceduralists, are assuming responsibility for "procedures" in some hositals.

A second shift in the hospital business model has been the outsourcing of some specialty physician services, notably anesthesiology, referenced above in the excerpt, and radiology. This latter change has been well documented in Lab Soft News with multiple references to nighthawk radiology, a variant of teleradiology. A third irritant is the deployment of an EMR, particularly a system that may provide inadequate functionality and/or be difficult to maintain, resulting in unplanned service disruptions. EMR deployments, even of robust systems, can serve as catalyst for physician revolts, particularly in settings where previous grievances are in play. Readers who follow news relating to healthcare IT will recognize that pressures to deploy EMRs in hospitals are mounting as a key element of healthcare reform, so they may be deployed even in the face of simmering physician opposition.

Comments

[EMR]

The integrated EMR and practice management suite offers many new modules and services to providers, office managers and administration staff to automate their workflow within the practice.

[EMR Medical]

Thank you for the info and post.

[emr software]

I was just out viewing blogs and came across yours.Thanks for such a great blog to share with.Keep on posting!

-mc