EMR gets big push from NY hospitals

I read a great article by Mr. Steven Lohr regarding a big hospital network taking on EMR. Here's an excerpt, but read the full article here (its good!)

...an effort to be announced on Monday by a big New York regional hospital group may be the most ambitious effort of this type yet --  a sizable investment intended as a linchpin in the group's $400 million commitment to digitize patient records throughout its system, including 13 hospitals.

North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System plans to offer its 7,000 affiliated doctors subsidies of up to $40,000 each over five years to adopt digital patient records. That would be in addition to federal support for computerizing patient records, which can total $44,000 per doctor over five years.

...Big hospitals operators like North Shore, analysts say, want to use electronic health records that share data among doctors' offices, labs and hospitals to coordinate patient care, reduce unnecessary tests and cut down on medical mistakes....The program will deploy tablet personal computers by Dell, and software by Allscripts, which can be retrieved by a doctor from devices including PCs, BlackBerrys and iPhones.

The North Shore move will be closely watched. ''This is big enough and bold enough that hospital groups across the country will take notice and rethink their own plans,'' said Glen E. Tullman, chief executive of Allscripts.

Still, to move so forcefully, analysts note, also carries risk for North Shore, if the expected payoff for physicians and the hospital group proves elusive. Mr. Dowling acknowledged that risk, but he added:  ''This was not done on  a pure dollars-and-cents, return-on-investment perspective. But better health care and better quality should be a good investment.'