Doctor Resistance to EHR Data Palooza

An all-out crazy party, partying at one place with a ton of people like there’s no tomorrow

Definition, Urban Dictionary, of “Palooza”

A national conference focusing on liberating health data and bringing together companies, startups, academics, government agencies, and individuals with the newest and most innovative and effective use of health data to improve patient outcomes

Mission of Datapalooza conference

I just came across on article in MedPage Today entitled

“Datapalooza: Slavitt Admits Gov't Failed in Health IT Push.”

The article opened,

“With just over 8 months on the job left to go, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Tuesday he now has "an obsession with the plight of independent physicians."

Since January, acting administrator Andy Slavitt and other members of agency have been traveling around the country listening to thousands of doctors complain about their electronic health record (EHR) systems, poor payment for their time, burnout, and confusion over quality metric requirements.”

What Slavitt was saying was that physician markets have repudiated the idea of electronic health records as the be-all and do-all of evidence-based medicine as the universal  tonic for improving health care outcomes.

After talking to hundreds of primary care physicians , Slavitt and his colleagues concluded,

“Through these conversations, one thing became very clear. What we call 'interoperability' at this point would not be considered an impressive achievement by the average physician…. while technology now supports us in getting coverage, it is largely failing us in the care experience.” And all of this without measurable improvements in care for patients

Slavitt's talk was followed by an animated panel discussion moderated by Patrick Conway, MD, CMS's chief medical officer, with American Medical Association CEO James Madara, MD; Geisinger Health System president and CEO David Feinberg, MD; and Chet Burrell, president and CEO for CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.

This year’s Datapalozza conference was its seventh.  Chet Burwell, President add CEO of CareFirst Bue CrossBlue Shield was one of its founder.    Joe Biden, Vice-President of U.S. and Sylvia Burwell,  Secretary of HHS, and 20 or so top down administrators and policy makers held forth, on these subjects.

·         Debate Over How To Rate Doctors And Hospitals   ·         We’re Swimming in Data; Now How Do We Build Business Models that Allow Us to Use It   ·         CMS Blue Button on FHIR in Action (FHIR -  Fast Health Interoperability Resources)   ·         Speeding Up the Pace of Medical Research Using Patient-Provided Data   ·         Data-Sharing Bogeymen: Hackers, Snoopers, Data-Mining & Mistakes In Medical Records   ·         Data-Driven Innovations for Invisible Illness, Mental Health, and Suicide Prevention.   The conference was packed  with attendees devoted to making data  the beating heart  of the health care system.   Apparently Slavitt is beginning to have his doubts about data, but he assured the audience it will take time for data to have the desired effect.     He noted that healthcare.gov failed at first, but 30 months into it has been a success,  helping sign up 20 million uninsured, with 30 million to go.   As I was writing this blog,  I  got to wondering  how data became such a datapalooza.   Then I found it has its roots in the lord,  “lollapalooza, “  periodic music festivals featuring popular rock, heavy metal, punk rock, hip-hop, and country rock.    Then I understood,  data medicine is the rocking alternative to traditional medicine.  Give medicine enough data, particularly metadata, enough apps, and enough complex algorithms, and all will be well, as judged from the top-down.    Now all we have to do is to get the doctors to fall  inti line and have them acknowledge it’s all for the patients' benefit.   It will just take time to make data interoperable for human beings. Have you heard of the Datapalooza? It’s a data conference where people let loosa, on how apps and algorithms will improve care. Unfortunately, to be perfectly fair. Data use hasn’t made measurable improvement, In spite of the electronic health record movement. Doctors complain EHR data gathering is intolerable, besides being  imponderable and non-interoperable. In their experience, the data palooza is a losa.