Doctors’ views of electronic medical records are not getting any rosier. According to a 500-physician survey released by athenahealth, which provides online business services to medical groups, and online physician community Sermo, while the overall favorable rating held steady at 77%, more detailed responses showed doctors were more skeptical about digitized records. The percentage of doctors saying that the financial benefits of electronic records outweigh the costs fell to 64% from 71% last year. And the percentage saying the patient-care benefits justified the financial investment fell to 68% from 73%. This year’s survey also found doctors were less likely to agree that electronic records can help reduce medical errors, improve efficiency and lower costs. And a greater proportion of physicians said electronic records slow them down and don’t achieve a measurable financial impact. Meantime, a separate report out from PricewaterhouseCoopers

finds that only 14% of the 1,000 U.S. consumers surveyed access their medical records electronically, a third of whom shared their electronic record with their physicians. Yet expectations for the potential electronic records run pretty high. Our favorite anecdote, from a hospital system exec talking about an advisory group of patients and doctors convened to help develop a patient portal: At our first meeting, we discussed what would be a reasonable turnaround time for making test results available for view on the portal. The physicians first said 45 days … then they said two weeks to 30 days. When we asked the patients, they said ‘How about 30 minutes?’ Forty-five days or 30 minutes — this time gap mirrors the expectation gap between health organizations and consumers. Image: iStockphoto

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Physicians More Skeptical of Electronic Medical Records