Trend: Hospitals begin to pay MDs to serve on IT comitttees

Traditionally, hospitals have recruited doctors to take part in health IT-related committees for no fee, on the assumption that doctors would see personal value in being involved. After all, doctors who take part do get a say in how products essential to their day-to-day work actually end up working.

That being said, relying on volunteer help is a bit risky for the IT managers running multi-million dollar projects, as you simply can't count quite as much on people who aren't compensated for what they do.For that reason, hospitals and health systems are increasingly beginning to pay doctors for participating in health IT committee meetings.

For example, Legacy Health System of Portland, OR has set plans to pay 10 doctors $120 an hour for spending four to eight hours per week on its physician advisory council.  The system's CIO, Dick Gibson, says that with plans underway to roll out both inpatient and outpatient EMRs, it's critical to have dedicated help he can rely on. Another example of a healthcare organization that pays for committee work is Capital Care Medical Group of Albany, NY, where physicians who serve on an EMR implementation committee get a stipend.

Yet another example of such a practice is at Aurora Healthcare, where physicians serving on a CPOE committee have been paid to attend monthly meetings since 2004. Like Legacy Health's CIO, Aurora director of medical informatics Mike Gorczynski felt that paying for their time would make it more likely he could count on their attendance.

To learn more about this trend:
- read this iHealthBeat piece

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