Gauging the Temperature of Today’s Physicians: Results of a New Survey

There’s a combination of factors involved. The younger physicians are choosing employment out of preference, because life and the hours they work will be more predictable. When you see more established physicians choose that model, it might be because of what’s happening in their market and their region, with them seeking a safe haven during the change, particularly if you’re looking at care that’s managed; your best chance of contracting will be through an employed model, or some form of employment or affiliation model. You need scale in order to survive in the current (emerging) environment. And historically, referral patterns have been established over a period of decades; in the new environment, referral patterns are being disturbed rapidly. So being employed is something they feel they need to do to maintain a supply of patients.

With regard the questions about EHRs, what’s your read about physicians’ growing acceptance of working in an automated environment?

The data is interesting. Our survey results surprised me a bit in that there was a higher level of acceptance of the potential benefits of electronic health records and automation than I’ve seen in some other surveys, so I took that as a positive sign. The acceptance level is very high. I like to talk about the art of implementation; I think there’s tremendous variability in the quality of implementation and usage. And those who use products poorly tend to blame the product or principle rather than their own usage. And the percentage of physicians using it to an advantage is thriving, though still rather slow. You still hear, ‘It takes too long to document or write a prescription.’ But in our survey, we saw a fairly high level of satisfaction. And one example is the percentage of physicians who are satisfied with e-prescribing. So I think we’re moving in the right direction overall.

What about c-suite executives? In your ongoing conversations with those leaders in healthcare, are they saying that the physicians in their organizations are moving more towards acceptance?

I think so, yes. Clinician adoption, particularly in an acute-care setting, used to be a big barrier; but it’s just not that big a deal anymore. Managing change is still a big deal, but clinician adoption is less of an issue than it used to be. It’s not what it was.

What advice would you give to healthcare IT leaders regarding the healthcare reform-, policy-, and practice-driven changes now taking place? Having the right tools to manage one’s medical practice will be absolutely essential in the emerging environment, don’t you agree?

Yes, I would agree, having the right tools to manage your practice day to day is very critical. And the advice for healthcare executives and those who lead large practices, is to spend the time to make those tools friendlier to practicing physicians. Some of those tools aren’t entirely there yet, and a good example of that is in the area of population health or accountable care. Those programs are still largely what I would call ‘hand-managed.’ And how we coordinate beyond the relatively narrow piece of the pie that each of us has, we don’t have such great tools to do that yet. And those are under development right now, and I haven’t seen anything that knocks my socks off yet. At HIMSS, the labels were thrown around all over the place, but no one has the entire picture on that yet.

On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the most optimistic, where are you right now, with regard to physicians successfully moving towards the new healthcare? Are the doctors now beginning to accept the new reality?

I would say I’m around a 7; I don’t know that they like it, but the message has been received. And it’s like in “Star Trek,” where “resistance is futile” to the Borg. So there’s acceptance, but I don’t think people are particularly happy about it. And we’re all going to go through some pain before we come out at the other end—as providers, payers, consumers, etc. Everyone recognizes that our healthcare system is fragmented and needs to be fixed. But I would give it a 7 that we’re going to move things along.