Mission Impossible: achieving 100 percent EMR adoption

By Patty Enrado, Editor

ORLANDO, Fla. — Nationwide physician adoption of electronic medical record, or EMR, systems is historically low.

In their senior executive track education session 3, “100 percent EMR Adoption: How a Heterogeneous Physician Network Achieved It,” tomorrow, at 10:00 AM, Room 311E Cynthia Bero and Michael Esters will unveil how their large organization overcame the usual barriers.
CIO Bero and Esters, manager of clinical and managed care systems, will walk through the strategies employed by Partners Community Healthcare to grow their community physician adoption of EMRs from five percent in 2003 to 100 percent by its 6,000 physicians by 2009.

“There was a very thoughtful strategy developed by the organization in the 2002-2003 timeframe,” Bero said.

By employing product strategies, incentives and leadership, Partners Community Healthcare was able to address multiple barriers to IT adoption by physicians.

“In our session, we’ll describe some of these recommendations, how successful we were at implementing them and the results,” she said.

Partners Community Healthcare had its share of complexities to contend with, including its large and diverse physician network, of which one third are community affiliates — that is, not employed. “The size and diversity created some challenges for us, but ones we were able to overcome,” said Bero.

“While we hear often enough about the need to align IT with the organization’s strategies, this story demonstrates how amazingly effective IT adoption efforts can be when all of those forces are working together,” she said.

Bero pointed out that collaboration within Partners Community Healthcare and collaboration with other organizations, such as the regional payers, proved to be a powerful asset in keeping the project moving forward.