With the federal government set to make available almost $20 billion in stimulus funding for electronic health records, area health information technology companies say they’re still having a difficult time convincing doctors to make the switch from paper records.
The federal stimulus package provides doctors more generous financial incentives than ever to invest in the pricey technology, which could typically cost a doctor’s office $30,000. The stimulus bill offers as much $44,000 to $60,000 per physician for going electronic, with the ultimate payout depending on Medicare patient volume.
The medical community agrees electronic records are the future of health care. With more patient information available electronically, and with more doctors plugged into the same information exchange, the chances of prescription errors or repetitive services are expected to plummet, ultimately lowering health care costs.
However, area health IT companies say doctors aren’t exactly knocking down their doors to sign up.
“The trouble we see is the physicians don’t really care that much about electronic medical records,” said Mark Heilshorn, vice president of operations for Waterbury-based Rezziliant, which offers a Web-based platform to host electronic medical records. “If they have to spend time figuring out and putting in data, they’re not going to see as many patients, and then they can’t bill as much.”
Doctor reluctance toward electronic records may come as no surprise, considering only between 5 and 7 percent of Connecticut doctors are electronically prescribing, according to Dr. Angelo Carrabba, immediate past president of the Connecticut State Medical Society.
“It’s one of those things where people say, ‘It’s nice, and I want to get going, but call me in a year,’” said Brent Wesler, vice president of business development at New Haven-based Square 9 Softworks, which converts paper records to electronic.
However, all indications are business for electronic records will take off, with even the likes of Wal-Mart getting into the mix. The discount department store chain announced last month a partnership with eClinicalWorks to sell hardware, software, installation, maintenance and training directly to physicians.
In the meantime, there is still widespread uncertainty about how the stimulus money will be doled out. The one certainty so far is the $19 billion for health care information technology incentives over a five-year period, and there are a number of deadlines that potential grant recipients must meet.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has until the end of the year to adopt a set of requirements for qualifying electronic health systems, which gives health care providers just one year to get electronic medical records up and running before the first round of federal funding goes out in 2011.
There are a number of additional requirements doctors are still trying to understand. They must prescribe electronically, they must be sharing data through a health information exchange and they must be able to demonstrate they are using electronic systems to achieve better and cheaper outcomes.
And even though the stimulus funding won’t actually kick in for another year and a half, health IT companies are pushing the message for them to get on board now.
“We think people will wait to get the stimulus details before making investments,” said Dan Soule, vice president of government relations for Eclipsys Corp., which a few months ago purchased Farmington-based Premise Corp.
Hartford Hospital and Saint Francis Hospital — among the state’s earliest adopters of electronic health records — are both making big internal pushes for their doctors to make the investment.
“My concern is if physicians don’t react, they’re not going to get on board to get stimulus funding,” said Jess Kupec, president of Saint Francis Physician Hospital Organization.
The stimulus funding also provides for $3 billion toward the development of state-sanctioned regional health information exchanges, a system that would link electronic patient records among health care providers in a similar region.
There is no such state-endorsed exchange in Connecticut, but eHealthConnecticut, a three-year-old effort, has been lobbying for the General Assembly’s approval during the current legislative session.
The group, backed by a $300,000 grant by the Department of Public Health in 2006, is made up of a 25-person board consisting of consumers, medical providers, hospitals, health plans and employers. It is now preparing a pilot program to link Medicare patients into a health information exchange, one that the group hopes could become a model for a statewide program.
Though eHealthConnecticut was originally named in a bill to designate a statewide exchange, it was removed because the state did not yet want to endorse a specific group. The state still awaits a report this month from an outside consultant on how the ideal statewide health information exchange should be structured, and when all is said and done, eHealthConnecticut members hope their group will get Connecticut’s endorsement.
Either way, members are concerned failure to act quickly on a health information exchange could mean Connecticut losing out on the stimulus funding.
“We’re all just sitting here, scratching our heads wondering why that hasn’t been done yet,” Kupec said.
