On September 22, 2011, the National Health Service (NHS) issued a Press Release announced that it was discontinuing its 10-year, $18.5 billion dollar effort to collect, computerize and centralize all of its electronic medical records. Existing electronic systems in hospitals and clinics would continue to operate but would not be interoperable across all of England.
The announcement essentially killed what had been hailed as “the world’s biggest civil information technology program” at that time.
The NHS program began in 2002 and was described as “top-down engineering” that met substantial resistance from physicians and other users of the system. The Press Release announcing the end of the program cited the lack of local control as the prime reason for the failure of its interoperable system:
“In a modernised NHS, which puts patients and clinicians in the driving seat for achieving health outcomes amongst the best in the world, it is no longer appropriate for a centralised authority to make decisions on behalf of local organisations.”Authorities in the United States were quick to assure providers that a similar information technology (IT) effort stimulated by Title XIII of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, called the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) would not fail.
Faith in American electronic medical records is largely voiced by policymakers who say they are collaborating with providers, such as hospitals and physicians, rather than mandating a top-down structure.
Authorities claim that Electronic Medical Records strategy, standards and outcomes are set by HITECH Meaningful Use criteria but implementation is being set at the local level by any of the 900 certified IT vendors that the providers may choose to use. However, providers complains that 900 choices is NO better than no choice at all.
Why should private practice physical therapists care?
Used to be, we could just hang a shingle, treat your patients and expect to make a decent living. Now, if you want to work for yourself and your patients, you need to comply with all sorts of regulations that may or may not improve your patient care or add to your patient's outcomes.
For example, the Physican Quality Reporting System (PQRS) is a quality measure reporting program that has, since 2007, paid physical therapists up to 2% extra for treating and reporting Medicare claims data. In 2014, this little "extra" will turn into a discount and the program will turn into a top down mandate.
Can authorities in the USA learn from the British disaster?
I hope that authorities will learn that physical therapists, acting at the local level can determine what is quality and that some of these local measures can be used in place of centrally-determined, top down quality mandates.
