Time to touch on a few popular topics that I found being discussed on Twitter. First, I’ll put the tweets and then a little but of my own commentary on these hot button issues in healthcare IT.
@GovHIT
Does a nationwide #EHR lower healthcare costs? Social media reactions | #GovHIT Blog http://ow.ly/64DL1
I always love when people talk about a nationwide EHR. I actually think that it’s a bad title by Government Healthcare IT, but that it’s a very good question. To me a nationwide EHR implies that there is one EHR for the entire nation. I think a number of other countries which are much smaller and less complex than the US have proven quite well that a nationwide government run EHR is a bad idea. I think the Government HIT article actually refers more to widespread adoption of EHR. To that, I’m obviously amenable and can’t wait for that day. Although, we still have a very long way to go.
@ekivemark – Mark Scrimshire
Should Health Care Move to the Cloud – Absolutely (but carefully)! #EHR #HIT 2.healthca.mp/oMMtNA
Might as well cover the cloud in healthcare issue if we’re talking about hot topics in healthcare. Little by little, I’m really seeing the shift to “the cloud” when it comes to EMR and EHR software. There are certainly still instances where the cloud based EHR doesn’t make sense. We also can’t start counting the days to the death of the client server based EHR software. In fact, non-cloud based EHR software is going to be around for a LONG LONG time to come. There’s far too many millions of dollars invested in these systems. However, I still do sense a shift from in house servers to cloud based EHR solutions.
I do appreciate the comment in the tweet about moving to the cloud…”Carefully!”
I have been following this topic also. I have yet to see a comparison on the benefits vs the downfalls. I think there is some confusion on what exactly the “cloud” entails and if the security risk as comparable to that of the server based model.
This is also something we’re seeing a lot of traction and discussion on from the market. And while the impact of the various pros and cons of a cloud model will be different for each organization, the below post does a good job of outlining some of the main issues to consider. Thought it might be helpful!
Cloud computing: Assessing the fit in your organization
http://searchhealthit.techtarget.com/healthitexchange/CommunityBlog/cloud-computing-in-health-care-assessing-the-fit-for-your-organization/
Christy,
I did a post on the sister site to this one that compared the effect of down time on cloud vs. server based models: http://www.emrandehr.com/2011/08/09/saas-ehr-down-time-vs-in-house-ehr-down-time/ I agree we could use even more info.
Jenny,
Thanks for stopping by. That’s a nice list of pros and cons. I’ll have to link to it from a future post.
My manager Ken had a phone discussion yesterday with a practice manager and his doctor in Kentucky about pretty much our same story. They bought eClinical Works (although our original EHR was another company) and got wrapped up in all the problems we had when we bought into the server hosted EMR disaster back in 12/2009. They said it’s broken every single day, the tech support is in India somewhere. To make things worse, not only did they pay $40K for startup costs, but the darned vendor is actually charing them for every bug they have to fix! What a ripoff! Embrace the cloud; it’s time to dump the losers.