EMR Costs, Just Like Hens in a Hen House

On the heels of my last post, EMR APP for iPhone, I mentioned the cost of the EMR iPhone app was less than $200. Keep in mind EMR deployments can cost millions. In a report by the Free Library, “EMR: one hospital that got it right,” Dr. James Leo, associate chief medical officer for Long Beach (Calif.) Memorial, stated "EMR [systems] can cost hospitals $20 million to $200 million due to implementation, vendor and hardware costs, staff training, and upkeep." Smaller providers’ can expect to spend from $25,000 to $60,000 per physician to deploy an EMR system. For smaller providers this projected cost doesn't cover consulting, training, add-on-software, and upkeep.

Despite the availability of EMR iPhone apps, EMR deployment is still a costly project. For this reason, a good case can be made for EMR implementations to hire an external EMR consultant, which is not employed by the vendor, is money well spent. Go ahead, laugh. Coming from an IT professional, this is like the rooster telling the farmer he needs more chickens in the hen house, right? But for a project of this magnitude, whether it’s for a small provider’s practice or a large hospital institution, having someone on board that’s not affiliated with the vendor but has rolled out one of these systems is money well spent.

Just like the farmer will be ecstatic with the additional hens in the hen house once all of his hens are producing more eggs, providers will be happy that a set of non-partisan eyes are part of the project team when implementation challenges are encountered. As IT professionals, we know that implementation challenges will be ecountered.

Click here to read the entire article from Free Library.