As many consider the upcoming challenges and opportunities around government incentives for physicians implementing EMRs, a critical missing link is the change management services required to support these implementations. The change management process introduces subsequent opportunities for transforming care workflow; this will in turn enable improved opportunities for productive outsourcing and management of commodity activities in the delivery of care.
Incorporating change management and workflow restructuring as a requirement to EMR implementation will lead to more successful implementations with better, faster realized ROI, and subsequently set the stage for introducing constructive, positive disruption into the care delivery model. One of these potential disruptions is the commoditization of additional elements of care delivery, particularly with respect to primary care. Commoditization is always accompanied by pricing transparency and upheaval – and this can only come about with information transparency in the form of benchmarking and metrics that accompany care delivery and which can potentially be captured in the EMR.
So we as taxpayers can see the ROI on public funds invested in the EMR incentives, can we push for mandatory benchmarking for practices receiving the incentives? Can require mandatory enrollment in frameworks for performance benchmarking like this one developed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? http://hcqcc.hcf.state.ma.us/
How do we maintain public ownership of the outcomes from these incentives?
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As a tax payer I support the concept of increased transparency and benchmarking of results by physicians, clinics, or hospitals. If we are going to demand proven results from banks, auto manufacturers, and the like we should similarly demand results from doctors. We need to know that our dollars are being spent on cost saving prevetative care, essential and effective procedures, useful and effective drugs.