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Out of curiosity, how many of you feel that EMR will lead to dramatic cost savings? why or why not, please, if you will.
Cost savings with EMR
- Thread starter pmrmd
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i was thinking more of the larger picture, like overall healthcare costs that some think will be dramatically decreased with widespread EMR implementation. personally i see a small benefit only.
EMR's will make offices more efficient. It will not dramatically reduced healthcare costs.
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I agree. The Obama fantasy of massive health care savings due to his misinformed increased efficiency and lack of duplication of tests will result in no significant savings. Consistently in EHR/EMR analysis, the only significant cost saving is in dictation costs. Reduced costs of storage of paper charts and physically pulling the charts for faxing records/entry of letters and labs is offset by having to hire personnel to scan every piece of paper coming into the practice. Of greater concern is the big brother having access to linked databases and the fact that once an EMR is implemented, recurring costs are out of your control. You will pay whatever is necessary to keep the system going, and vendors typically increase their costs of maintenance and upgrades every few years or hide costs as "extras".
Its obvious that allowing the private sector to use profit motive to find efficiency has failed and we now have to have the government to show us how to be efficient....for which they have a great track record.
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We have 20 docs. We converted to EMG (eCW) in 2006. We reduced our medical records dept to 1.5 emplyees, from about 8-10. But we now have 4 full time IT, likely will need a 5th soon. The cost to have them is about what we spent on medical records.
We have a desktop in every room and laptops for mobility. We have a gigantic doubly-redundant server that requires it's own AC unit. I think we've sank about $750,000 + into this system.
I don't think it's saved us anything, and we are now getting to the point that original computers and laptops are reaching the end of their lifespan.
We have a desktop in every room and laptops for mobility. We have a gigantic doubly-redundant server that requires it's own AC unit. I think we've sank about $750,000 + into this system.
I don't think it's saved us anything, and we are now getting to the point that original computers and laptops are reaching the end of their lifespan.
I agree with the comments so far. I think EMR can make the office more efficient but not necessarily more cost effective. One other factor to consider is when you shut down your practice, it's a lot easier and cheaper to store a hard drive for 7 years than a bunch of paper charts. But this whole FED policy of portraying everything they have on their political agenda as "cost-effective" is insulting.
By the way, has anyone tried the "openEMR" software? It's open source and seems to be fairly well supported and reviewed. Definitely requires some computer literacy but may be worth it...
I agree with everything you said. EMR decreased our medical record department employees. But we had to hire more IT support, purchase expensive equipment, maintence etc. It is actually costing more than our old method of having a combined paper chart and a small computer record system that had dictated notes in it as well as labs and radiology reports.
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I think EMR will increase costs since it makes it so easy to fake a high-level visit. It's already happening and from I can see, fraud is very common.
Some of the charts I see have the same level 4/5 documentation at every visit. I have even seen it for pump refills - a whole CC/HPI/ROS/SH/FH/PMH/PE and then a pump refill. When I ask the patient if they did all that at every visit they are usually shocked because all that happened was a pump refill.
One of our local neurosurgeons does this with his EMR. I will see a 3-page H&P. I have asked his patients if the doctor really palpated their abdomen and looked in their ears. A common answer is "He was in the room for 5 minutes and never touched me".
Another pain doc has an entire page devoted just to ROM measurements, none of which can be recalled by the patient. Once in a while I'll hold up a goniometer and ask them if it looks familiar. It doesn't.
That's not to say you can't fake a handwritten chart, but the EMR seems to make the process of creating fraudulent notes a lot faster and more efficient.
Some of the charts I see have the same level 4/5 documentation at every visit. I have even seen it for pump refills - a whole CC/HPI/ROS/SH/FH/PMH/PE and then a pump refill. When I ask the patient if they did all that at every visit they are usually shocked because all that happened was a pump refill.
One of our local neurosurgeons does this with his EMR. I will see a 3-page H&P. I have asked his patients if the doctor really palpated their abdomen and looked in their ears. A common answer is "He was in the room for 5 minutes and never touched me".
Another pain doc has an entire page devoted just to ROM measurements, none of which can be recalled by the patient. Once in a while I'll hold up a goniometer and ask them if it looks familiar. It doesn't.
That's not to say you can't fake a handwritten chart, but the EMR seems to make the process of creating fraudulent notes a lot faster and more efficient.
