The CEO of Microsoft told Nashville’s health care industry leaders Wednesday small physician practices are making the expansion of electronic records a challenge. Several companies based here could benefit from billions of dollars from the federal government to expand electronic records.
Nearly half of doctors in the U.S. work in practices with fewer than six physicians. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says many practices don’t have their own information technology personnel.
“The people we’ve got to get on board mostly don’t have anybody full-time. If you’re a practice with five or six doctors, you have somebody who spends full-time on the systems? Maybe, maybe. If you’re smaller than that, probably not.”
Ballmer says small hospitals also tend to spend less time and money on their information systems.
The way to get more physicians using electronic records is to start on a local level. That’s according to a panelist who also spoke to the Nashville Health Care Council and challenged the group to get started.
Big health care technology companies often say their systems won’t talk to each other. Glen Tullman is the CEO of Allscripts and says he’s refused to link systems before too.
“I’m one of those vendors and when a big customer gets us in a room and says, ‘the two of you will connect.’ We say, ‘we can’t,’ and they say ‘or we won’t pay you.’ And we say, ‘let’s get about connecting.’ And it happens very quickly.”
Tullman says to speed up the adoption of electronic health records, standards have to be put in place locally. He says a group like the Nashville Health Care Council could get doctors and hospitals together and demand that health care technology vendors link their systems or physicians won’t buy the services.
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