Today, I stumbled upon this fascinating tweet about hospital EMR ROI. It’s from @dbtech_Ras:
Only 40% of Hospital CIO's measure ROI on their #EMR implementations, with 36% of this group convinced their ROI calculations are accurate
— dbtech (@dbtech_Ras) August 21, 2013
Unfortunately the tweet doesn’t contain the source of their information, but the idea of EMR ROI is a very interesting and important topic. Should a hospital CIO be tracking the ROI of their EMR implementation? Are most hospital CIO’s tracking EMR ROI?
I would imagine many hospital CIOs aren’t tracking EMR ROI, because they see EMR as a necessary requirement of being a hospital today. Do they track the ROI of cleaning supplies? No. They just realize they need them and they try to manage the cost of the supplies as best they can. I think many are treating EMR in this same manner. They see EMR as a necessity regardless of ROI.
The interesting thing is that there are actually a lot of ways to measure an ROI for EMR software. None of them are perfect and they certainly leave out all the intangibles and long term benefits of EMR. For example, how do you measure an ROI on legibility of charts? That’s tough. It’s also hard to predict how having your charts electronic will enable you to be a better hospital 5-10 years from now. Not to mention if reimbursement eventually will require an EMR. Things like this will happen I’m sure.
With those disclaimers, you still can calculate an ROI. The low hanging fruit is the EHR incentive money and the future EHR penalties for not having an EHR. These add up to really large numbers for hospitals. You can also look at productivity before and after the EHR. Of course, depending on how you implement the EMR, this could actually be a cost of EHR as opposed to a benefit. Either way it should be calculated in the ROI. There are many more.
From what I’ve seen everyone sees the future of physician documentation is going to be in an EMR. Just because the move to EMR is inevitable doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still keep focused on the ROI you can receive from it.
Is your hospital tracking your EHR ROI?
Here is the source John:
Healthcare IT News. January 2013 survey by Beacon Partners
Thanks Gregory.
[…] according to a study released by Beacon Partners last year. Healthcare Scene’s John Lynn wrote a few months ago that CIOs likely view the systems as a “necessary requirement of being a […]