I just returned from a physician meeting this morning where a significant amount of time was dedicated to helping the physicians decide where to click in the EMR (Electronic Medical Record). While important for efficiency and profitability of the practice, is this really where we want our physicians spending their time?
My thoughts would be that in a single specialty group practice, the ideal physician group meeting would focus on discussing the most recent clinical trials of the new drug or whether there was a cost benefit in selecting a treatment method. The time should not be spent deciding “do we document that on this screen and if we don’t, will it show up in our meaningful use report?”
I guess the old saying is that “you get the behavior that you pay for” so as we focus on meaningful use, eRx and similar measures, the behavior we pay for is the behavior we are going to get. Shouldn’t we be focusing on the provision of cost-effective clinically proven medicine?