PHRs simply won’t go anywhere without data and arguably the bes source of data is a physician EMR system. Unfortunately, the adoption of EMR is abysmal across the care continuum of providers sitting at somewhere around 15-20% depending on how you count it/who you believe.

My favorite HIT news and rumor source is HIStalk. Mr HIStalk does an excellent job and his readers feed him all sorts of rumors that most often turn out to be true.

Right now Mr. HIStalk is on vacation and has invited some of his esteemed readers to write in his absence. Jonathan Bush, athenahealth’s CEO was the feature writer this week. In his piece he raises a simply question that was asked of him by a Wall Street Journal reporter:

Where is the cash flow contribution of an EMR to a physician?

Jonathan simply did not know so he asked HIStalk readers to chime in with their thoughts. Some great commentary has been contributed and if you have even an outside interest on why your doctor may still be using paper, those comments will provide you some valuable insight.