To defend against malpractice suits, one speaker at the recent MGMA-ACMPE annual conference in San Antonio recommended, practices must maintain constant vigilance of their health information technology systems. Another speaker said lawsuits can be avoided by showing patients courtesy and respect.
They are probably both right, though the second speaker's message was more inspiring.
Ronald Sterling, an electronic health-record consultant based in Silver Spring, Md., gave a presentation titled "Malpractice Discovery in the Age of EHR" and warned his audience that he was about to address a "depressing" subject.
Sterling said the good news was that mitigation efforts in the area of malpractice discovery could best be described as "good housekeeping," and he warned against "ceding clinical control to the techno geeks."
Sterling sprinkled his talk with horror stories such as the pediatric practice whose patient immunization records were not transferred into the EHR, and his main message seemed to be: Test systems; verify data; train staff; and document what you did.
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Without hesitation, Dr. Allan Korn, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association's chief medical officer and senior vice president for clinical affairs, declared that the patient-centered medical home has the potential to transform the U.S. healthcare system.
"The things you want going up are going up, and the things you want going down are going down," said Korn in an interview following his appearance Monday on a panel assessing the state of the healthcare industry presented in San Antonio at the MGMA-ACMPE's annual conference. "There's no question that the medical home is working, and that's what's gratifying to me."
While speaking on the panel, Korn said he thinks steps could be taken to improve the patient-centeredness of the medical-home practice model. Still, he said later, medical homes—which use information technology to coordinate care and track the treatment of patients who have chronic diseases—have led to double-digit declines in patients' exposure to radiation from diagnostic tests, in "ambulatory-sensitive" hospital admissions, and in unnecessary and costly healthcare episodes.
They have also boosted physician satisfaction.
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