Infotech tipping point? (HIMSS meeting)

It seems that momentum and physician interest in electronic medical records are getting bigger than ever. But doctors at a major information technology conference don't know if the technology has really hit the mainstream.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. March 14, 2005.

Reports from conferences important to physicians

Paul Tang, MD, an internist and chief medical officer of the 600-doctor Palo Alto (Calif.) Medical Foundation, stood up before a physician symposium at a major medical information technology conference to make a declaration.

"We're really near the tipping point" of adopting electronic medical records, he told the crowd on the first day of February's Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Conference & Exhibition in Dallas. Rather than EMRs being a rarity in practice, he and other speakers said, they are reaching the critical mass necessary to make physicians use them.

But audience member Jonathan D. Leffert, MD, a solo endocrinologist in Dallas, was unmoved.

"I'm a solo physician in private practice. My big concern is how physicians like myself and others in small and medium practices can afford an EMR," Dr. Leffert said afterward. "[Dr. Tang] is from a practice that probably has several hundred physicians whose decision-making is very different than if you're in solo practice and have to pay it out of your pocket."

The comment underscores the disconnect between the physicians who generally pound the table for clinical automation and those who are supposed to feel their vibrations. The former typically are from deep-pocketed large practices while the latter are small and medium practices with little change to spare. But smaller practices are being heavily courted, because the goal of improving patient safety and reducing costs through automation can't happen without them.