Group Health Doctor responds to "Is Group Health A National Model?"

One of my friends, a Group Health Physician, responded to the Group Health post from a few days ago and had some important clarifications:

I think there are some inaccuracies. You do get a bonus for communicating with patients via email (secure messaging), but not by telephone (at least that I'm aware of), and it's nowhere near 20%. One positive thing that wasn't mentioned though is that you get a small bonus for high patient satisfaction scores. Another thing that is not mentioned is how the telephone visits and the secure messaging is done. It hasn't replaced the number of patients we wee and the appointment slots we have. Instead the workday has been lengthened another 30 minutes to do the telephone visits at the end of the day. There is some time to secure message patients, though not always enough time (I guess it depends on the complexity of the patient and your typing skills...)

The electronic medical record (EMR) at Group Health is quite advanced. There are a number of EMRs being offered by different companies, but they are not mutually compatible. One thing that will need to be done is setting up a way for hospitals and clinics with different programs to be able to transfer data electronically from one system to another. Currently, if we get outside records, it can't interface with our system. We have to manually scan all the hard copies in the system, and this isn't indexed in any way. So instead of flippipng through a paper chart, you are clicking through scanned pages of a paper chart.