This is absolutely correct. I don’t know how anyone can expect these physician offices to all the sudden have the IT knowledge to make an appropriate and effective decision for their office. Less than 1% of physician offices have CIOs so much of the decision is resting upon the physician. Most office managers are incapable of making a good decision which means that integration, adoption, and assimilation are going to be a serious issue for most offices. Many doctors have stayed away from technology because they either A don’t understand it, or B, they think it is a waste of time.

Further announcements about the portal are available on ama-assn.org.

Part of the problem we see is that it seems that the offerings are getting increasingly complex, requiring a PhD just to make a smart purchasing decision for a practice. The questions become, can physicians enter into yet another technological/website relationship that takes up even more time? What about implementation of the EMR? What about Twitter and Facebook? (tongue-in-cheek, but who has the time for all of this? Isn’t there, like, some patient care that needs to happen?)

Obviously there will be a lot more demand for ambulatory practice consultants in the near future to help ordinary practices make smart decisions and integrate existing technologies with new ones.