| |
Questions About EHR
TOPIC
|
DESCRIPTION OR INFORMATION
|
MORE INFORMATION
|
What Will An EHR Cost? |
What it costs is the sum of the direct and indirect expenses. Apart from the cost of your time (which is enormous), the costs vary by your crucial deployment decisions. Web-based systems have smaller hardware costs, but higher communication (Internet) costs. Don't overlook office renovation, paper chart conversion costs, installation of wired and wireless networking, legal, accounting, EMR consultant, EHR Selector and Constructor costs, and licensing or purchasing costs for the EMR software itself. It also depends on whether your practice is being offered an 'almost free' EMR by your hospital under the Stark "Safe Harbor" program. See our book, Successfully Choosing Your EMR:15 Crucial Decisions for more information. |
MSP EHR Selector |
Are There EHR Systems That Support My Specialty? |
Yes! The Andrew & Associates EHR Benchmark tracks systems that support 46 different clinical specialties designed for all care settings - MD Office, Hospitals, Home Healthcare, Skilled Nursing facilities and others to name some of them. Different EHR systems have different strengths (and weaknesses) for particular practice specialties. A system that works well in a psychiatric practice may not work well at all in an oncology practice, yet many EHR developers claim just the opposite. The MSP EHR Selector currently supports 465 different practice specialties.
WARNING: Current CCHIT standards, as presently written do not adequately cover the EHR needs for all of these specialties, so CCHIT certification is an insufficient criteria when selecting an EHR product and in fact may be skewing some vendors to support features that individual practices may not need. There is nothing wrong with a CCHIT-certified vendor, but don't assume because an EHR product is CCHIT certified that it is either free of vaporware or that it will meet the needs of your particular clinical specialty. |
|
Ready To Select An EHR Now? |
The MSP EHR Selector (www.ehrselector.com) can help you learn about EHR developers and system features and key standards and terminology. All this information is consolidated in ONE location, including a GLOSSARY of TERMS with links to more in-depth information found on the web. When you exhaust the material here, go there and spend some time with this tool. |
MSP EHR Selector |
Are There Publications From Which To Learn About EHRs? |
Yes, although you may not be familiar with them. While there is excellent and in-depth info in some of the back issues of our Industry Alert newsletter, the best source is our new MD2eMD magazine.MD2eMD is a new magazine focused on taking your practice electronic. It takes you through getting your staff ready, preparing your practice, establishing your goals, selection a system, and deploying it. A list of other, advertising-based magazines are also listed on this website. |
Industry Alert™ newsletter download this Sample Issue (PDF format, size=2.5 megs) |
Updated 5/2010
| | | | |
|  | |
| |
