Dr Sibel Blau Discusses Technology Challenges and Data Sharing

The electronic medical record (EMR) can be burdensome but having a good value-based care team collecting data can help, said Sibel Blau, MD, medical oncologist at Northwest Medical Specialties, PLLC.

Transcript

What have been some of the challenges you face with technology and data sharing?

There is a need to put as much structured data as possible, predetermined by workers on creating the EMR and working with them on how we need that information to be put in. So, we use OncoEMR, and it’s structured data requires a lot of clicks in the boxes and a lot of remembrance from anybody whose touching the EMR. Anybody from the front desk to the back office to the providers. Nurses, of course, they have to do their piece.

So, it requires much longer and more work in the EMR and that is one piece that has been very overwhelming, and that cause a lot of physician burnout on our part.

The other thing is, of course, data sharing. Now that piece, we have a very good value-based care team; the head of it, Amy Ellis, and the team, the [information technology] team at Northwest Medical Specialties, has actually done a very smooth job on collecting the data and sharing it. Of course, it’s a lot of work, but I don’t think it was as burdensome as what we had gone through prior to putting all that data into the EMR.