By Cheryl Long
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W
hen the Ontario government intro-
duced a program in 2009 subsidiz-
ing doctors who were willing to transition
from paper to Electronic Medical Records
(EMRs), it was expected that patient care
and medical practice efficiency would im-
prove as a result. It seemed like the ideal
way to encourage widespread adoption
of technology into the health-care system
but problems soon began to surface.
Rather than using the subsidy to choose
the best systems for their practice, some
doctors opted to generate extra revenue
by purchasing less expensive EMR soft-
ware from an approved vendor list. Some
systems were difficult to learn or cumber-
some to use; others worked off a template
format that could miss important patient
details. Most systems were set up for use
only on a desktop computer and monitor,
which meant that doctors would be trying
to listen to patients while typing away at a
keyboard.
“By over-subsidizing relative to the cost of
the systems, it led many doctors to choose
systems that had the least impact on them
instead of choosing ones that would actu-
ally change workflow and have the great-
est list of benefits to their practice,” said
Dr. ThomTyson, President and CEO of Ca-
nadian Health Systems (CHS) Inc.
Though the premise of moving health care
NOVEMBER 2015
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