Study: EMR ROI Stronger In Low-Income Setting

Well,  here’s some information which caught my eye right away. According to a new study published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, EMRs can provide a good return on investment for hospitals located in low-income areas.

In the study, researchers studied the what happened when a tertiary hospital in Malawi implemented an enterprise- wide EMR system.  The felt it was important to evaluate an EMR implementation in a low-income area such as this, the authors noted, because such hospitals face obstacles unlike those in more prosperous areas, such as marked supply and staff shortages, which might change the effect of such a system.

To examine the impact of the EMR, researchers looked at three areas: length of stay at the facility, transcription times and lab use.  The hospital saved an estimated $284,395 per year in U.S. dollars. By the third year of operation, the EMR  started generating a positive ROI, and by five years, it provided net benefit of $613,681, according to FierceEMR.

This is an inspiring study for those who hope to see EMR success stories, as until recently, there’s been little if any information to suggest that EMRs can offer a substantial savings on operations, much less help to generate a profit.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that hospitals aren’t generating savings or even profits by implementing an EMR.  As we noted in a previous story, few hospitals are planning for and implementing EMR ROI measures early in the game, according to a recent study from Beacon Partners.

If hospitals don’t dig in and integrate EMR ROI measurements into their strategic planning, it’s not surprising that they aren’t getting the fullest picture of what their systems are delivering. Backward-looking measurements aren’t likely to do as much as measurements built on a hospital’ls entire vision for success. Let’s see what happens when hospitals focus on ROI as a top-of-mind item going forward.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

1 Comment

  • I did an informal analysis of the use or lack thereof in an Emergency Room. As I described it here, the huge waste of time, space and staff resources because of the slowness from paper pushing must be very costly – and that’s just one department. And that ignores its effect on patients. Imagine this throughout a hospital. Patients and staff constantly waiting for orders to arrive, reports delivered. So slow that many patients are in the hospital longer. I could go into much greater detail but I believe that a well implemented EHR can make a hospital far more efficient.

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