Spending on electronic health records systems by hospitals and health systems continues to rise, as enthusiasm for them wanes among senior healthcare executives, survey results show.
Dissatisfaction with electronic records systems is ratcheting up among senior healthcare executives, says the group purchasing organization, Premier, Inc. Survey results released Monday show that that 41% of C-Suite respondents say they are either dissatisfied or indifferent toward their EHR systems.
"What we are hearing increasingly from healthcare leaders is dissatisfaction with their existing EHR systems, often citing cost and difficulty of use," said Michael J. Alkire, chief operating officer at Charlotte, NC-based Premier.
"Providers need a solution that integrates clinical, financial and operational data across their hospitals and health systems; the majority of EHR systems cannot do that."
The growing dissatisfaction continues despite almost half (49%) of respondents stating that their largest capital investment this year will be in health IT, an area that includes EHR as well as hospital telecommunications systems, telemedicine, and advanced data analytics.
This is the second year in a row that health IT has been the most commonly cited capital investment, but the percentage has risen from 46 percent in spring 2013 and from 45 percent in spring 2012. Additionally, 27% of respondents cited Health IT as the biggest driver of costs in their health system.
Spending on clinical healthcare information accounts for between 25% and 35% of an average hospital's capital budget.
EHR Letdowns Won't Hinder HIT Spending
While he thinks modern EHRs have come a long way from where they were even five years ago, Michael O'Rourke, senior vice president and chief information officer at Colorado-based Catholic Health Initiatives, a non-profit health system, can easily tally the major painpoints caused by EHRs.
Along with the transition to digital, problems with availability, interoperability and security begin to crop up. "If there's a glitch or planned downtime, it's very hard on our clinicians. But unplanned downtime— now, that's very, very tough on them," O'Rourke says, of staff in CHI's 89 hospitals in 18 states.
Many clinicians, he adds, have felt that their workflow has been disrupted by moving from the time-honored pencil and paper medical chart system to digital, causing widespread frustration with the new records systems.
O'Rourke also cites the expense of EHR implementations, the continual need for system upgrades, and concerns around data security as other frustrations attendant to EHRs.
Survey respondents cited as the second most commonly area for capital investment acquisition of clinical equipment, including surgical, imaging and lab equipment, which was cited by more than 20 percent of all respondents.
Other trends mentioned in the survey included widely reported primary care physician shortages (indicated by four out of five respondents) and a jump in provider consolidation, which is now reported by one in every four respondents.
Survey respondents comprised 127 hospital and health system e CEOs, CFOs and COOs. One hundred and twelve organizations of various sizes and types across 32 states were represented.
Lena J. Weiner is an associate editor at HealthLeaders Media.