Selling the bitter EMR pill (HIMSS meeting)

At a major health technology meeting, technology advocates, hospitals and others put their heads together to see how to get physicians to embrace health IT.

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff. April 7, 2008.

Reports from conferences important to physicians

A few days after the University of California Medical Center in Irvine went live with its new electronic medical record system, a letter arrived on the desk of the hospital administrator.

"I think the person who chose the [EMR] system should be shot first and then fired," the note read.

Pamela Griffith, RN, director of applications for the UC Medical Center, displayed the note at the annual conference of the Health Information and Management Systems Society in Orlando, Fla., in late February, where a lot of discussion focused on how to get physicians to use technology.

Only a few years ago, many of the chief technology officers, vendors, hospital administrators and others who attended HIMSS thought that as technology became more pervasive, physicians would have no choice but to adapt. It turned out that assumption was false. Griffith presented the angry doctor's note as evidence of the backlash her hospital failed to anticipate.

She and others shared success stories, as well as lessons learned, of implementing new technology. The common thread was the realization that for major IT projects to be successful, physicians need to be on board, early and often. The solution, many found, was engaging doctors in leadership roles before implementation.

Sometimes it's the reluctant ones who make good leaders, said William McClatchey, MD, chief medical information officer of the Atlanta-based Piedmont Hospital system. He found involving physicians who are opposed to the technology gave the IT staff and hospital administrators a better sense of the backlash they could anticipate, and hopefully prevent, at go-live time.