The Concord Monitor reports that the "federal stimulus bill passed in 2008 contained billions of dollars in funding for medical providers to adopt electronic health records." The carrot: the financial incentives to adopt electronic health records. The stick: if healthcare providers do not achieve "meaningful use" in their electronic records, they face deductions from their Medicare payments.
However, some independent physician practices that do not have a lot of Medicare payments find "the incentives haven’t been big enough to justify the costs of meeting the high standards," The Monitor further reports.
Doctors find some benefits from electronic records but they also find the records to be "cumbersome, time-consuming and annoying" than old-fashioned paper charting, The Monitor further reports.
The value of electronic health records will likely improve if healthcare providers become more agile in using them and if the systems also are redesigned and updated to reflect the deficits many users find in them.
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
