Reasons for Adopting an EHR

I’m still a little bit partial to my list of EMR benefits which is pretty specific in its description of the possible benefits of an EMR. However, today in an EMR stimulus webinar they listed the following reasons for adopting an EHR:

  • Financial
  • Quality
  • Patient Satisfaction
  • Clinical Research
  • Community Leadership

Not a bad list of reasons to consider for those people on the fence about adopting an EMR.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

3 Comments

  • John …

    Do you have who sponsored that EMR stimulus webinar?

    Are there slides that provide the backup details on how those “benefits” (financial, quality, patient satisfaction, clinical research, community leadership)… benefitted primary care group practices?

    Earlier this week I listend in to Modern HealthCare’s webcast on: “The Search for Meaning—and Money—in the ‘Meaningful Use’ Regulations” …

    http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20100111/WEBINAR/301119986/1157

    I thought that Dr. Tang (Chief Medical Information Officer
    Palo Alto Medical Foundation) and Tony Trenkle (CMS Office of E-Health Standards and Services) were somewhat removed from the realities of group practice and came across “academic” and “bureaucratic” in turn. Conversely I especially thought J. Michael Kramer, M.D.
    Chief Medical Information Officer, Trinity Health and to a slightly lesser degree David Seaman, CEO,
    Pronger Smith Medical Care came off very well informed and experienced in the overseeing sizable HIT implementations … especially Dr. Kramer. Note his slides especially that follow the CMS slides in this presentation. Can also download them through registering for the webcast. Best info comes at about 34 minutes in when Kramer speaks (slide #26-32). Take special notice of his slide #39

    Slides: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/assets/pdf/CH68428127.PDF

    Whenever I see a presentation and it leads with “financial benefits” of EHR/EMR implementation it triggers an immediate reaction that “this must be a presentation from the HIT industry”. The most important financial benefits of EHR/EMR are to the HIT industry.

    Remember … 100% of ‘stimulus dollars’ will have made it to the vendor before the providers ever get CMS approval of meaningful use.

  • Last week while cataloging and filing I went back and reviewed a Medscape EMR Survey from Oct 2009. Will only take you 10-15 min to read the summary article.

    http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/709856

    Survey respondents (3700 including 1800 physicians) were asked to respond to questions on:

    -Ease of data entry
    -Overall ease of use
    -Reliability
    -Easy to learn;
    -Vendor training program
    -Vendor customer support
    -Ease of EMR implementation
    -Interactivity with other office systems
    -Value for the money
    -Physician satisfaction
    -Staff satisfaction
    -Patient satisfaction

    Final section on Advice on Choosing an EMR is very good and tracks with many of the points John has presented here.

  • DBerry,
    It was a presentation by Greenway. I haven’t seen any slides. Although, the slides only had the bullet points above.

    I disagree that the HIT industry has the financial benefits. Certainly they do, but I think that EMR can be a financial benefit to the clinic as well. Not if they purchase an overpriced unusable system, but if they purchase a system that focuses on usability and productivity it can work wonders.

    I read one EMR vendor recently say that if the EMR kills productivity, then it’s not worth implementing. Add in the word “permanently” like this, if the EMR permanently kills productivity, then it’s not worth implementing.

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