Power steering: A push toward technology

Corporate giants like the Big Three automakers are using their muscle to get physicians to use computer technology in their practice.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. March 26, 2001.

Efforts to push physicians into using technology aren't new. What is new these days is who is doing the pushing: large employers.

For example, a consortium of Fortune 500 companies known as the Leapfrog Group is offering incentives to encourage hospitals and physicians to use computer systems to reduce medical errors.

And in a separate but complementary initiative, General Motors Corp. will give handheld devices to thousands of physicians as part of an electronic prescription project it will undertake with Medscape Inc., an Internet health and electronic medical records company.

Although doctors and industry observers say the two initiatives are good ideas, they note that they and their colleagues already use technology and don't have to be pushed into it.

"I don't think physicians are afraid of technology," said Alan Tonnesen, MD, anesthesiologist, intensivist and physician liaison to information systems at Memorial Hermann Hospital, Houston, which plans to test a computerized physician order entry system this year. "Physicians are for any technology that makes them efficient."

But a key hurdle to implementing CPOE systems is that it can take physicians up to three times longer to enter orders on them than writing orders on paper, Dr. Tonnesen said.

"Physicians are all for patient safety, but they don't see themselves ordering medications that patients are allergic to or the wrong dosage," he said. "Yes, errors occur, but they don't occur very often to any one physician, and most of the time the [potential] consequence is caught before it reaches patients. We're saying [to our physicians], 'Yes, it takes more time to put the order in the computer, but downstream you will save more time for other reasons.' " [...]