The Real EMR Incentive: We want LONG-TERM EFFICIENCY, not short-term funding!!!

This is a mantra I have long been espousing, and it was nice to see a recent report from the CapSite research firm backing up this assertion.  More specifically, this study of more than 2000 medical groups across the US found that "the most important reason driving Ambulatory EHR purchases was the goal of physicians making their practice more efficient and not the ARRA / HITECH Act Stimulus funding".

Said another way, to get real adoption - we need to figure out how to promote USABILITY not just Certification.  And let's continue to move from the inefficient paper-based paradigm (EMR 1.0) to the much more appropriate web-based or iPhone paradigm (EMR 2.0).   My last post, which talked about "The Future of EMRs", provides more details on this idea.  And I am looking forward to learning more on this topic when I go to SanFran this week for the "Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society" - where I will be listening to the top experts across all fields, as well as speak on a panel of EMR aficionados discussing the importance of improving usability of these tools.

So what can we (especially the government) do if this concept is true (the key to adoption is Efficiency)?  Maybe we should reconsider how we spend the $30+ billion in HITECH funds?   Perhaps instead of giving "relatively" small grants to a lot of doctors, we use the money to help the whole industry create more Efficient and Usable products?   Myself, and others, have brought up this concept before (see "How should we use $36 billion to promote EMRs").   But it becomes more relevant when one of their own ask the question, which just happened:

As reported in this article, at a recent DC conference, former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill (who has authored academic papers on patient safety with current Medicare chief Dr. Donald Berwick and Lucian Leape) posed a technical question to keynote speaker Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology: "Why is it that we're reluctant to declare that we are going to design the best prototype that we can with an idea that we will have [iterative versions] as we learn more and we identify more needs?  Why is it that we can't call to question and get on with what's a clear and apparent need for a national standard that's a work in progress?  It's not that it has to be perfect from day one, but your office basically says, 'We're going to do this now?'," O'Neill said before a packed house of doctors and administrators of corporatized health systems. 

Dr. Blumenthal's answer did not clear things up as he talked about analogies to the interstate highway and the Internet - which actually seemed to hurt his own conclusion.  In other words, if you look at those government investments - you see that they created the infrastructure upon which others could build.  They did not involve the government giving money to end-users (e.g. local truckers) to buy and install concrete paths themselves, nor did the government give money to Internet end-users to buy and install web-servers themselves.  And yet, here we are - giving money to end-users (physicians) to buy and install a variety of proprietary systems that don't talk to one another without heavy lifting since each vendor creates their own versions of the concrete road - with proprietary data models and back-end functionality.

If the government believes in these past analogies - then they need to reconsider how they distribute their EMR monies...perhaps building a single standardized EMR platform (like they do with highways or Internet protocols) upon which the vendors can add their "value" and healthcare providers and patients can benefit from consistency and competition around the key issue at hand - Efficiency.

Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation: 2010 Transform Symposium

I finally visited the Mayo Clinic this past week!  I was there for the Mayo Clinic's Center for Innovation Annual Conference - The 2010 Transform Symposium, where the theme was "Thinking Differently about Healthcare".
I got a tour of the Clinic, as well as their Innovation Center… so you can imagine, I was like a kid in a candy store!  The Mayo Clinic has a culture of innovation that starts with "Drs. Will and Charlie" (the Mayo Brothers) as well as their father (William W. - who mortgaged his house to get a crazy device called a microscope so he could study disease better).   And while this is part of their culture, they also recently recognized the importance of having a full Center dedicated to expanding on this arena - thus launching their Center for Innovation in 2008, which now includes around 50 people - a very impressive size.

There were some great people and speakers at the conference. I was inspired in various ways - including the need to eat better (more whole grains, less processed foods and fats), the need to walk more (NEAT = Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), the need to relax in whatever manner works for you, and the importance of living and working in a space that is designed well.  I realize those don't sound like they actually met the theme of the conference (since we've been preaching those themes for a long time) but it was how these people said it and what they are doing differently that made an impact.

The first speaker (Dr. Coombs, president of the Mass Medical Society) pointed out the importance of both empowering patients to ask questions AND giving them resources to find answers.  Jaime Heywood (PatientsLikeMe) always gives a great talk about the power of patient data.  Mrs. Q (who blogs at "Fed up with School Lunch") made me very happy my kids are in a school that treats lunch with respect.  Dr. Dean Ornish opened my eyes once again to the importance of Lifestyle and a focus on "health care, not sick care" (FYI - he also told us Medicare is now paying for wellness programs - wow!).  And the conference walked the walk by having a fantastic chef make healthy and delicious meals and snacks for us the whole time - check out his recipes at NewTaste.com.  Various Design experts gave examples of the importance of their work. And anything by Sekou Andrews (a "spoken-word artist") was amazing.

I was fortunate to have a little time on stage as well to present some of the work we've been doing with the Szollosi Healthcare Innovation Program (http://www.theshiphome.org/) around "Thinking Differently about EMRs" (Electronic Medical Records).  The summary is that today's systems (EMR 1.0) are failed paradigms which try to simulate paper rather than try to take advantage of what computers can do well - information visualization, predictive analysis, etc.  Part of this is due to doctors and IT people who don't understand the difference between tasks/workflow and "thoughtflow".  Another part is due to the vendors who don't utilize true information designers in creating their systems, and the last part is due to the evolution of monolithic 3-tiered siloed systems which don't allow for easy innovation (see the NRC Report for more details).  I then displayed a few screen shots of the potential for future systems (EMR 2.0) - to hopefully stimulate the audience into realizing we can do better.  This was similar to a talk I gave in 2009 at HIMSS - here is a blog with the slides.

Finally, kudos to the Mayo Center for Innovation (and particularly Dr. David Rosenman, the conference coordinator) for an excellent meeting.   For more thoughts on the conference - check out the Mayo Center for Innovation's Blog.