Welcome to the weekend round up of various EMR, EHR and Health IT tweets. One thing that’s been really interesting is seeing the excitement of people leading up to HIMSS. It’s amazing how much better a conference becomes with this lead up. The connections that are made before the conference set it up for a much better experience. I honestly can’t wait to attend HIMSS and be with so many interesting people.

Now, on to some interesting tweets that I found from around the twittersphere:

REC data shows docs waiting for vendor EHR upgrades | Government Health IT | via @drwareinc bit.ly/wgLBhx

— Linda Lia (@EMRAnswers) February 12, 2012

I found this tweet quite interesting until I read the article that it links to. The title says something about docs waiting for vendor EHR upgrades and then the article mentions almost nothing about EHR upgrades and doctors waiting for it. Is there really that much of delay in getting the latest EHR software? Ok, maybe I can believe it in Hospitals (I’d like to know from that perspective too), but I can’t imagine someone that’s paid for an upgrade is still waiting for that EHR upgrade to meet MU.

I do believe many dragged their feet and are just now planning for an upgrade. A large number of older EHR installs never did regular updates to their EHR software (Big Mistake) and so upgrading so many versions at once is a bit daunting and so it wouldn’t surprise me if many clinics are reticent to go through that process. Although, that doesn’t mean they’re waiting for EHR upgrades. It means they’re waiting to go through their own process.

The article does have an interesting stat that EHR Vendor Selection was the biggest reported barrier with 34% percent claiming that barrier. I guess more clinics need to read this EMR Selection e-Book.

The article also points out an interesting benefit to RECs: survey organizations.

#HIMSS12 My Talk: “How to create a care coordination team using spare parts” = EMR + Checklists + Low Cost Team bit.ly/xEmV21 #hcit

— Lyle Berkowitz (@DrLyleMD) February 6, 2012

I love the simple formula. I think we often try to make things harder than they need to be.

Data sharing – #ImmunizationsTypical EHR System ’Falling Short Of Its Potential,’ Say Researchers shar.es/fR5ZE #MU #queryhealth

— Kim Nolen (@kim_nolen) February 13, 2012

This is just one example of potential EHR benefits. There are a lot more that I think we’ll start seeing now that we’re getting wider EHR adoption.

Watch out for these #EHR and #EMR pitfalls! It’s often humans, not technology, to blame: bit.ly/AscI2R(via @HITExchangeMag)

— HP Healthcare (@HPHealthcare) February 9, 2012

Ahh…but it’s so much easier to blame technology since it doesn’t talk back.