This blog post has been cross posted from www.healthcareguy.com. The original post appeared last November, in response to an article posted by SoftwareAdvice.com posing the following questions to its readers in a survey format: “Are more doctors buying electronic medical records than before? Or, has the Stimulus bill only brought out the tire kickers?“  While the survey results aren't scientific and it didn’t have enough participants to draw wide scale conclusions, the results do imply a general feeling of positive momentum towards the purchase and implementation of EMRs.

As an experienced healthcare IT professional I am very happy to see that people are looking towards EMRs and automation to improve healthcare staff productivity. However, I’d like to urge a bit of caution and be sure that buyers don’t jump into the market for the wrong reason. My rule about automation and insertion of software in any workflow process is simple: if you can’t repeat it, don’t bother automating it. 

More...