EHR requirements 'too strict'

June 16, 2010 — Elite healthcare institutions are expressing deep reservations about the government’s proposals for electronic health records (EHR), saying the approach taken by the Obama administration has “unrealistic expectations” and “unachievable timelines,” according to a recent article in the New York Times.

Physicians and hospital executives, who have expressed their frustration in meetings with White House and Medicare officials, say the president’s all-or-nothing approach could discourage efforts to adopt EHR because some of the proposed standards are impossibly high and the risk of failure is great.

Administration officials said the standards were needed to meet an ambitious goal set by President Obama. In a speech in January 2009, two weeks before taking office, Obama promised the country would make “the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years all of America’s medical records are computerized,” says the article. 

Source: American Physical Therapy Association, www.apta.org