Selling EHR

HRH Queen Elizabeth II has a YouTube channel and, according to this story, has very recently "embraced...major technological advances" such as the internet, cellphones, Blackberries and iPods. I think this would qualify her, according to Rogers' innovation adoption model, as a late-adopter of information technology.

She's still ahead of many physician-laggards.

It's tempting to ridicule physicians who are reluctant to use electronic health records (I think I just did!) But, for those of us who are keen to promote the use of EHR, we need to understand why well-educated, tech-savvy physicians often resist implementation of EHRs.

(DISCLAIMER: I'm a member of our health region's recently-formed IT Steering Committee so I'm a little evangelical about this stuff.)

I'm already sold on the virtues of EHR: reducing paper clutter, rapid access to patient information, easy transfer of information between care-givers, decision support, less scut work, etc.

But, in order to win over skeptics, we need to provide an EHR system that goes beyond moving from paper to pixels. We need an EHR/IT system that changes the way we can practice medicine.

We need WOW! (Don't try to figure out the acronym - it's just WOW!)

We need to put together an EHR/IT that sells itself - that flies off the shelves. We need the EHR equivalent of an iPod/Wii/WOW (OK, this time it's an acronym - ask a teenage boy).

Our EHR needs to do COOL stuff.

Here's a great NEJM article (c/o Atul Gawande's website) that lists some cool stuff EHR/IT could be doing for us (our patients, I mean!). This article is 4 years old - that's 26 in tech years. We're seriously behind!

Which of these options/opportunities described in the article appeal to late-adopters/laggards? We need to know. We have to ask.

Over the holiday season, I was shopping for a new TV. One salesman wanted to set me up with a 52-inch wall-mounted model. He showed me a football game in high definition. The picture and sound were incredible.

He didn't make the sale.

You see, he didn't bother to find out my needs. I don't watch sports or rent many movies. My kids don't need 52 inches of SpongeBob. The screen had to squeeze into a cabinet recently vacated by our defunct TV set.

If we want to have physicians accept (even embrace, a la HRH) EHR, we (the salespeople) have to find out their needs. How do they practice now? How can EHR make their practices better, easier and safer? What are their concerns about EHR?

Hard sell won't work with physicians. At the first hint of something being forced on us, we circle the wagons and become as stubborn as mules (among other cliches). Administrators planning to implement EHR must sincerely engage physicians in the process.

Early. Often.