More HIT in Doctors' ABCs?

In addition to diagnosing and treating everything from heart problems to headaches, doctors in training must learn how to use health IT in their practice, according to a study published in this month's Health Affairs journal.

And the training shouldn't end there, contend the authors of "The Need to Incorporate Health Information Technology into Physicians' Education and Professional Development." Health IT training also should be a part of doctors' continuing education, licensure and board-certification processes, they say.

"Nationwide, as physicians and health care systems adopt electronic health records, health information technology is becoming integral to the practice of medicine," write the authors, including former National Coordinator for Health IT Dr. David Blumenthal, in the article abstract. "But current medical education and professional development curricula do not systematically prepare physicians to use electronic health records and the data these systems collect."

Access to the full article is restricted to subscribers, but CMIO magazine reports on six opportunities the authors recommend for integrating health IT into physician training requirements:

• Add health IT questions to medical licensing board exams, including questions about what it takes to achieve meaningful use of EHRs.
• Base accreditation of medical school and teaching-hospital curricula in part on the inclusion of health IT coursework.
• Phase in meaningful use of health IT into state requirements for licensure after accrediting organizations and specialty boards make their own changes.
• Integrate assessment of health IT capabilities into board certification, a move the American Board of Medical Specialties has already begun.
• Make health IT topics part of continuing medical education.
• Use practice profiles generated by advanced EHR use to customize continuing medical education, including topics such as population health management and intervention.