Physician EHR Implementation Is Doggone Difficult

Now that Medicare’s future direction for chronic care management has become murky, I’ve started to pay more attention to the many other demonstration/pilot projects that Medicare has in the works relating to chronic care.

In April Medicare announced roll out of its DOQ-IT U (Doctor’s Office Quality — Information Technology University), as a part of the Physician Focused Quality Initiative. DOQ-IT U is an interactive, Web-based tool designed to provide solo and small-to-medium sized physician practices with the education for successful Electronic Health Record (EHR) adoption, including lessons on culture change, vendor selection and operational redesign.

Implementing EHRs in physician practices will be a key element of success in physician-led chronic care projects. How successful have pilots of DOQ-IT University been at getting physicians to adopt EHRs?

A recent article in the San Francisco Business Times sheds light on early DOQ-IT U results:

Lumetra led the pilot program, and had the best results nationally, said spokeswoman Laura Marshall. Its percentage of successful EHR implementations at small medical practices during the pilot was nearly twice that of the national average, 31 percent versus 17.6 percent, according to Lumetra. As a result, CMS is promoting the DOQ-IT program nationally and implementing its so-called online university to help spread the EHR gospel.

Am I the only one who finds it tough to be inspired by a 31% success rate? My point here isn’t to rain on anybody’s parade, but to point out the difficulty of EHR adoption. Thanks to Fred Fortin for steering me to this in his recent blog posting — Will Doctors Bite the Virtual Apple?

For additional reading:

• CMS launches DOQ-IT University at HealthBlawg
• DOQ-IT PowerPoint Summary by CMS
• Lumetra press release — California Doctors Adopt Electronic Health Records Systems at Nearly Twice the National Rate