EHR - Who Pays for Efficiency? - New York Times: "“I can’t capture the economics of scale as a sole practitioner,” she said. “Electronic health records may well be a good thing, as a collective good, but why should I make the investment if I don’t get any of the gains?”
Physicians get only about 11 percent of the savings from electronic health records; the real benefit goes mainly to private and public insurers because, for one, they are paying for fewer unnecessary tests, and automated record-handling is a big cost saving for the payers, according to a study by the Center for Technology Leadership, a medical research group. “The doctors bear all the costs, and others reap most of the benefit,” said Dr. David J. Brailer, who was the national health information technology coordinator in the Bush administration from 2004 to 2006. “The incentives are totally awry."
This is a very short-sighted view. If patients prefer doctors who keep EMRs ( as many do, because they are much more confident that they will receive better medical care), then doctors who invest in EMRs will have more patients - and can recover their investment more quickly.
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