E-Patient Update: Clinicians May Be Developing Strong EMR Preferences

Not long ago, I wrote about a story from another publication, one which engaged in a bunch of happy talk about how EMR companies were improving their user interfaces. At the time, I expressed a great deal of skepticism about this claim, suggesting that the vendors had misled the reporter into believing that user aspects of EMRs were changing for the better across the industry.

While I stand by my original skepticism to some degree, I have to say that I got a surprise recently when I heard some nurses discussing two major EMR platforms. The one they were using, they said, was awful and awkward to use. Apparently, they missed the other terribly.

Now, at the time I was a patient in the emergency department, so I didn’t have a chance to ask them any questions about their preferences, but I was struck by the conversation because I knew which vendors they were discussing. However, they could have been talking about any enterprise EMR.

Clinicians developing preferences

I don’t mention this exchange to praise one EHR over another. I bring this up merely because this is the first time, having spent a lot of time in medical environments due to chronic illness, that I’d heard any front-line clinician express a preference for one enterprise EMR over the other.

In the early days of widespread EMR adoption, I could scarcely find a clinician who didn’t hate the system they were working with, much less one who truly liked it and wanted to use it. Eventually, I began to find that many clinicians thought the system they worked with was more or less okay, though I rarely found any screaming fans for any system in particular.

Now, I’m arguing that we may be at a new stage in clinician adoption of EMRs. The point I am making is that now, some of the clinicians with whom I’ve had contact showing some enthusiasm about one EMR or another.

No big surprise: Experience breeds preference

The truth is, when you think about it, it’s not surprising that clinicians have finally developed preferences (rather than the lists of EMRs which they truly hate). After all, it’s been going on 10 years since the HITECH Act was passed and the money started to flow into EMR subsidies.

Since then, clinicians have had the opportunity to work with multiple EMR platforms at various facilities, and informally at least, develop a catalog of the strengths and weaknesses. Nurses and doctors know which interfaces they like, whether tech support tends to respond when they have a problem with the particular system, whether any analytics tools they provide are worth using and so on.

Given this fact it’s hardly surprising that they’ve figured out what they like and what they don’t, and which vendors seem to suit those needs. After this much time, why wouldn’t they?

As I see it, this is something of a turning point in the industry, a new moment in which clinical professionals have learned enough to know what they want from an EMR. I don’t know about you, but speaking as an e-patient, I think this is a very good thing. The more empowered clinicians feel, the better the work they will do.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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