CMS's push for you and your peers to adopt electronic health record (EHR) systems by 2016 has a passionate advocate in Administrator Donald Berwick, MD, a former pediatrician appointed by the Obama administration. Dr. Berwick, who is generally well regarded in the physician community, appears in a four-minute YouTube video released last week to make a personal case for EHR adoption.
"I am admittedly biased when it comes to the topic of health information technology and EHRs," he says in the video. For the entire two decades of his practice, from 1976 to 1997, he used an EHR. Dr. Berwick was probably among a handful of physicians who can claim this, as he practiced under the aegis of the Harvard Health Plan, an early pioneer in the clinical use of EHRs.
Dr. Berwick goes on to describe the benefits of an EHR from his clinical perspective, and tells an interesting anecdote of treating an autistic native American child in a remote reservation -- a seemingly difficult task made almost easier than seeing the same patient at his home practice in Boston, thanks to EHRs, he says.
You can check out the video in its entirety below.