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At the 2009 AHIMA (American Health Information Management Association) Convention and Exhibit held earlier this month in Grapevine, TX, much of the buzz revolved around the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the impact this act would have on EHR (electronic health record) adoption. This was an expected focal point for the conference. However, in an unexpected twist, AHIMA executives and invited speakers focused more on the HIM (health information management) professional's role in ensuring a smooth transition to new EHR technologies as opposed to the benefits and opportunities afforded by technological advancement. This was a refreshing take on recent developments in the health IT space because, in this editor's opinion, nothing is more important to ensuring the adoption of a nationwide EHR platform than effective change management.

For example, ARRA states that a healthcare facility must establish "meaningful use" of EHR technology before it can receive stimulus benefits. While this term has still been only vaguely defined, one thing is for certain — to leverage EHRs in a truly meaningful way, healthcare professionals must embrace the technology. To embrace the technology, healthcare professionals must see it as useful and of value. In other words, EHR technologies must clearly be perceived to make a healthcare professional's job easier as opposed to more difficult. HIM personnel can help build this collective consciousness in their healthcare facilities through active communication and support throughout the EHR transition, but AHIMA states that additional education will be paramount to accomplishing this. In fact, the association recently crafted a letter to state legislators calling for more baccalaureate-level programs on EHRs and health IT in state universities. You can view this letter in its entirety at www.ahima.org/arra .

Physician Change Key To EHR Adoption
If AHIMA is positioning HIM professionals as internal EHR advocates, then it most likely already knows (or will quickly learn) that physicians will be the most important (and arguably most difficult) group of healthcare professionals to convince of the value of EHR technology. Younger physicians will (in most cases) be easier to persuade. They were raised in a technological age and are likely very comfortable using digital applications for patient record keeping. In fact, this younger generation of physicians will actually champion the transition to EHR in many cases.

More mature physicians may be harder to convince of the value of EHRs. These doctors are most likely accustomed to manual methods of record keeping including pen and paper notation and verbal dictation/transcription. Getting these folks to break their old habits and make the move to EHR technology will most definitely be a challenge.

Perhaps the best way to ease the transition to EHRs for America's older physicians is to select EHR technologies that don't force these doctors to change their ways too dramatically. For example, EHR packages exist that allow physicians to continue recording patient histories using pen and paper. Document scanners convert these documents to digital images and extract and import the data from these images into an EHR for enterprise access via a computer network. Other examples include tablet PCs embedded with e-forms and EHR software that actually mimic the pen on paper process. Using these technologies, a doctor can actually use a stylus on the tablet to complete e-forms that look just like the paper forms they are accustomed to. Handwriting recognition technology then immediately digitizes the data and imports it into an EHR. These are just a few ways that you can reduce the burden of an EHR transition on the physician. The more you can do to reduce the pain that accompanies process change, the more successful your EHR migration will be.