Survey: Most doctors off track with EMR goals

According to the 2011 Black Book Ranking’s user survey, about ninety percent of healthcare providers that purchased Electronic Medical Records (EMR) technology are off track to meet their meaningful use implementation goals.

“Over four hundred Electronic Health Records (EHR) system developers have emerged in the market over the past year and, as in most fast adoption environments, not all vendors equally service and support their new clients,” said Dr Kevin Parker, lead EHR Researcher for Black Book Rankings.

“The customers of only a handful of high performance EHR vendors expressed high confidence in meeting the demonstration of meaningful use deadlines,” adds Parker. “The perception of an effective technology partner is highly dependent on the quality of EHR vendor support through a several month implementation.”

Among those failing to accomplish their meaningful use goals, EHR users indicate the following as the top five reasons they are losing implementation traction:

• 93 percent a lack of substantive support from their EHR vendor,

• 89 percent delayed implementation due to the cost of additional support from EHR vendor/consultants,

• 82 percent report a hurried selection of an EHR vendor has resulted in negative consequences,

• 77 percent lack available and/or trained staff to properly implement an EHR, and

• 69 percent are unprepared and underfunded to rectify difficult system interfaces.

Source: Black Book Rankings