Try to get a straight answer on how much an electronic health records system cost for a hospital (yes, I sometimes talk about hospital EMR on this blog too) and it’s nearly impossible. Of course, it’s the number one question on most hospital executives’ minds in light of stimulus funding, a simple price tag is still hard to find and you simply can’t find a straight answer.

Well, the people at MedSphere (memorable for their VW Bus pic at HIMSS) have put out a hospital EHR stimulus ROI calculator. The required fields are provider number and number of beds. As always I’m a bit skeptical about any sort of ROI calculator, but I like to have as much data as possible. So, here’s one other reference for those trying to calculate the EHR stimulus ROI.