Physicians Gather to Give Feedback on the State of EMRs

February 10, 2016

Leona Rajaee

Physicians Gather to Give Feedback on the State of EMRs February 11, 2016

The American Medical Association (AMA) recently hosted a town hall forum in Seattle to discuss how local physicians felt about their EMR and where they thought improvements could be made.

The complaints heard most commonly stemmed from the lack of usability in the design and the delay towards interoperability among competing EMR companies.

What came out of the town hall:

Doctors want EMRs to be rebuilt with a focus on usability in the design and interoperability among competing companies.
Prized features would include national patient data coordination available to all practices and increased searchability within EMRs.
An overwhelming response was that EMRs need to focus on providing better care, not make providers an extension of administrators with the patient.
This is the third town hall style meeting sponsored by the AMA. The first two were in Boston and Atlanta.

What this means for independent physicians and their practices:

Frustration with the lack of interoperability is staying front and center in the public eye as people are urging the government to get involved.
Doctors continue to feel that EMR vendors are under-serving their needs by focusing on administrative functionality rather than the user experience they need at the clinical level.
Physicians have clear, product-focused ideas to offer as daily users of EMR platforms, and vendors would be well-served to hear this feedback and translate it into easy-to-use features in their software.
The AMA is active in seeking feedback from physicians around the country and using it to drive change in both public policy and EMR usability, and can advocate for you to help drive change in EMRs.