Partners Healthcare

For most of the past decade, we’ve been planning and working on adopting electronic medical records (EMR) at Partners HealthCare; that is, the process of getting Partners Community HealthCare Inc. (PCHI) physicians to understand the value of computerizing their medical records and then helping them through that transition. From 2002 through the end of 2009, much of our IT time, energy and focus went into this important activity. But now, with all of our physicians using electronic records in their office practices, what’s left to do?

A lot.

Think back on any new technology that you learned in recent years. Once you started using the new technology, you probably only used about 10% of its features. My Blackberry comes to mind. It’s been over a year and it still does things I don’t completely understand. This was often the experience of our physicians when it comes to EMR. The early days were a blur of new commands, functions and trying to figure out how to get through the day. It’s not surprising that many important EMR functions were not well learned.

That leads us to the first response to this question: what’s left to do? We are helping our EMR users optimize the use of their systems. For many, this means learning some of the tips and tricks that were too much to master during those first few weeks of usage. For others, it is implementing more sophisticated modules of the software to extend the value of the EMR. Regardless, this work helps our physicians get the most out of their EMR investment and also prepares them for a new series of financial incentives being offered by the federal government. These incentives – also known as the Meaningful Use incentives – offer eligible Medicare providers up to $44,000 for acquiring an EMR and using that EMR in a meaningful way (read our previous post “We Applaud Meaningful Use Regulations” for more perspective on this topic). Our physicians have a good head start toward meaningful use, and we will continue to help them achieve those standards.

But that’s not all. Now that we have so many physicians managing patient data in EMRs, why not ask our patients to join in? Patient portals are software products that offer patients access to their electronic medical record as well as tools to communicate with their physicians’ practices. Patients love having the ability to participate more fully in their health management. Last year, the PCHI Board made the use of patient portals a network priority, and today we are working hard to increase the number of physicians who offer them to their patients. Roughly one out of every four physicians in the PCHI network now offers a patient portal. We hope to increase that number dramatically over the coming quarters.

So, while we achieved much by getting to 100% EMR adoption, there is still a lot going on and much that remains to get done.

*figures 0-120,000 in chart refer to numbers of active patients. Source: Partners HealthCare IT