EMR Benefits and Return on Investment Categories

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The Electronic Medical Record may consist of computer order entry, decision support, electronic medication administration, documentation, and so much more. [1]

The sections below detail the benefits, costs, and barriers in evaluating EMR implementations. Selecting, financing, and launching an EHR system is difficult. Product certification seeks to make the first step a little easier. [2]


Contents

Informational

EMR Benefits: Informational

Security

EMR Benefits: Security

Mobile EMRs

The present day physician is always busy and on the go between hospitals.clinics and own practice.[3] There will be better workflow, improved communications, cost containment, and most importantly enhanced patient care.[3] Ease of access to EMRs using mobile technologies such as iPad and smartphones has decreased resistance to EMR use and implementation in busy settings such as Emergency Departments (EDs). A recent study has shown that use of iPads in EDs presents the following advantages in addition to those observed for EMRs in general (29).

  1. Enhanced patient education and satisfaction
  2. Increased mobility of the device provides a better fit of technology to the application setting
  3. The iPad touch screen enables easy use even without excessive knowledge of computers
  4. Mobile devices was similar to paper charts in that they are extremely portable allowing physicians to carry it around in EDs easily
  5. Remote patient monitoring and diagnosis
  6. Remote ordering capability for physicians [78]
  7. Ability to cross-reference medical terminology and provide multi-language support.
  8. Supports globalization of medical care.
  9. Ability to send health data directly from wearable devices to medical records [1]
  10. Link daily activities of living (e.g. fitness, nutrition data) to health data [1]
  11. Dictate on the iOS device, e-Prescribe, and perform real-time eligibility checks [74].

In addition to voice and text, new mobile device models offer more advanced features, such as web searching, global positioning systems (GPS), high-quality cameras, and sound recorders.[4] The June 2012 Manhattan Research/Physician Channel Adoption Study found that doctors’ ownership and use of mobile devices is pervasive, with 87% using a smartphone or tablet device in their workplace, compared to 99% who use a computer.[5] 13 Surveys have shown that around 80% of physicians use an iPhone, while most of the remainder opt for Android smartphones. [6] [7]

The March 16, 2012, Letter to Us at Kaiser Permanente reported that Kaiser Permanente members can use mobile smartphones (Android, iPhones, or Blackberrys) to access their medical records, lab results, and all other aspects of kp.org. Kaiser Permanente members accessed the smartphone application over 1,000,000 times during the first month of use. In 2011, KP patients participated in more than 12,000,000 e-visits with their health care providers.

Another form of mobile technology that can ease access to EMRs are wearables such as Google Glass, Moto 360, and the Apple Watch [8]. [9]There also other wearables on the market such as BodyMedia Fit system that is FDA approved. These products can collect basic biometrics such as number of steps taken, hours slept, calories burned, etc., and when synced to a smartphone or computer, track your progress over time [10]. Patients with chronic illnesses can wear these devices that can collect continuous data that can be automatically be updated to an EMR. This will allow clinicians to see more accurate trends of a patient's vitals that could not be achieved with regular appointment visits[8].

Architecture of Mobile EMRs

Severence Hospital started developing mobile EMR applications in 2005. In 2010, a mobile solutions for healthcare professionals for IOS based iPhones. In 2012, this application was redesinged to be platform independent, encryption policy was added to ensure data security and provided integrated management of Legacy EMR and a mobile solution. The patient list was organized by themes and its main feature was EMR history retrieval. The new architecture design process had four steps: Server and its architecture, Screen layout and story board making, Screen UI design and development, Pilot test and step by step by step deployment.

The Mobile architecture: consists of Mobile server and Mobile device.The server receives information from the EMR system matched with search parameters which is then converted into information to be displayed on specific mobile device. This mobiles solution was first pilot tested for two month and later deployed in four Severence Hospitals[69]

Cloud Based EHRs: Cloud based EHRs are on the rise in todays health care world. Even though there is still uncertainty and resistance towards cloud services, many small physician practices are leaning towards the cloud. Some important considerations to note when moving towards a cloud based EHR are hardware, usability and cost of ownership. This type of EHR is easier to update than onsite EHRs. [11]

In January 2015, due to a recent KLAS study, ZH Healthcare (ZH), a leading provider of open source Health IT solutions, announced the release of BlueEHS, the first Electronic Health Solution (EHS). BlueEHS will provide a “customizable on the cloud” design that allows users to enable or disable modules that may not fit the provider’s need. The basic system will be offered to providers at no cost.[12]

Entrada health

There is availability of high quality speech-to-text services with efficiency and intelligence tools “in the cloud.[13] Also, there is maturation of connectivity technologies, such as HL7 and integration engines. [13]

Entrada Health of Nashville, TN (www.entradahealth.com) has developed a mobile-enabled Smart System powered by SayIt™ voice recognition technology from nVoq (www.nvoq.com) of Boulder, Colorado. This smart system has been flexibly built to work with the leading smartphone platforms. The system uses the highly accurate voice recording capabilities available within mobile devices as a “virtual keyboard” and then builds an intelligent workflow around the data management process. Instead of attempting to replicate the entire user interface for a given application, such as an EMR, the system minimizes the amount of device keystrokes required for data capture by focusing primarily on clinical narrative unique to each patient such as SOAP notes. Voice data is captured, converted to text and then synchronized with the appropriate business application, which typically resides either on a client’s desktop or in the cloud. [13]

drchrono

With technology pushing us into a new era of healthcare, it appears that many hospitals and privately owned physician institutions are switching to EHRs. This has been a breakthrough from previous years, but the change is still happening. Now, programs such as drchrono take the EHR and make it accessible through a mobile device such as iPhone or iPad through a specific tailored app. The remarkable functionality of drchrono is that it provides benefits not only for physicians, but also for patients. [14]

Physician Benefits

In present time, it seems as if physicians always give the five-minute consultation when evaluating a patient. They come in, introduce themselves, go over the patient's problem briefly, give a diagnosis and prescription if necessary, and then move on to the next patient. It can be concluded that time is a very key aspect of a physician's daily practice. Therefore, it is logical to hypothesize that a physician needs to find ways to cut time in any scenario so that he/she may spend more time with a patient. This is where the benefits of drchrono play a key role.

The first benefit implemented by drchrono is the ability to have speech-to-text support. Essentially, a physician is able to tap on the screen and begin to speak; the program will then analyze the audio sample and turn it into text. [15] With specific M*Modal technology implemented into the application, medical language is easily turned into accurate text. [16] A functional tool like this eliminates the barrier between older physicians who struggle with using physical or electronic keyboards.

Another benefit directly derived from drchrono is the ability of customizing templates on the system. [17] Many traditional EHRs used in hospital settings are inundated with extra material which is irrelevant to many physicians. With template customization, a physician who specializes in neurology can specifically set forms that are only relevant to his practice. Other material such as cardiovascular, pulmonary, etc. can be removed completely from the application in order to have better user-interface functionality.

Patient Benefits

One of the most frustrating things for a physician can be when a patient either arrives late or completely misses a scheduled consultation. One of the main reasons this tends to happen is simply because the patient forgot. With the drchrono application, patients can also benefit from the software. The application has the capability of allowing a patient to receive automated patient reminders. [18]

When a patient arrives at the clinic, logging on to their personal drchrono account will speed up the visit. Once logged in, a patient is able to check-in and fill out any necessary forms online. These forms will then be stored directly on the patient’s account for future use. [19] Tools like this make a patient’s visit more friendly and provide a reason for greater patient satisfaction.

Future trends

Apps that help in the management of chronic health conditions,such as diabetes,obesity,&heart disease, are needed and are eagerly awaited.[20] Mobile device hardware and apps are expected to continue to improve, bringing additional and enhanced benefits to clinical practice.[21] Future mobile apps are expected to include even larger databases, as well as CDSS prompts that will aid in the clinical decision making. There is also need to develop standards for mobile apps so that they can integrate seamlessly with H.I.S capabilities,such as EMRs and patient monitoring systems.[22] [23] As the use of medical devices and apps expands, more educational health care programs are expected to incorporate them into medical curricula. At the same time, establishing standards and policies within health care institutions will be necessary to ensure ethical and transparent conduct.[24]

In September 2013, the FDA released long-awaited guidelines concerning regulation of mobile device apps, announcing that the agency will evaluate apps that are “used as an accessory to a regulated medical device; or transform a mobile platform into a regulated medical device.” The FDA has chosen to exercise only enforcement discretion for apps that are deemed to pose less risk, such as those that inform or assist patients in managing their disease without providing treatment suggestions, or simple tools that allow patients to track or organize health information or interact with their EHRs.[20] [25]

Health Information Exchange (HIE)

With better information integration capability, it allows for healthcare institutions to facilitate better quality care, contain costs, and better manage risks. Thus, by having healthcare organizations that incorporate an EMR, it enables for both clinical and business advantages by in turn creating a clinical healthcare system that helps to unite crucial patient information with various departments. As a result, this helps to create a central clinical information repository and resource used throughout the integrated delivery network of the institution. This in the long run allows for the different information of patients to be coalesced together in a timelier manner, which can reduce errors in diagnosis. EMRs allow for interoperability such that multiple clinicians and facilities may use or add to a patient’s record, even at the same time.

The advent of the Health Information Exchange (HIE) allows for sharing of patient information electronically within an organization, system, community, region or state. This helps in monitoring not just a patient's health but health in certain subsets of populations, whether for a certain diagnosis group or within a social demographic or a geographic region. Stratifying the data to look for trends over areas, ethnicities or over time has helped in development of software models which help in predicting the health of not only a patient but also patient populations over time. Metrics such as 30 day readmission are used commonly in healthcare to gauge the quality of care of a patient and is an example of where predictive modeling is being used. EMR has allowed for transparency, and the analysis of data has helped to establish trends and patterns. Big Data is another commonly used term in healthcare and refers to the availability of large amounts of data available from the collection of patient EMR records.

Health information exchange (HIE) is the electronic transfer of healthcare information between various organizations. This has become an important topic because it improves the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare. Electronic health records (EHR) helps to facilitate the electronic exchange between hospitals, clinics, and patients much more possible. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 84% of hospitals that adopted EHR and participated in regional HIO exchanged information w/ providers outside organization. HIEs also assist with provider/patient interactions regarding chronic disease management. One example of this looks at Western New York (WNY) Beacon Community and the regional health information exchange (HIE) HealtheLink. The two organizations teamed up to help diabetic patients in upstate New York with disease management. The cost of diabetes management has risen from $174 billion in 2007 to $245 billion in 2012; that is a 41% increase over five years (American Diabetes Association, 2014). These figures address an increased in financial burden, use of health resources and lost productivity associated with diabetes (American Diabetes Association, 2014). In response to this rise in cost, WNY Beacon has shared strategies not only improving the health of diabetic patients, but cutting costs for such management as well. Their strategies cover three primary topics: 1) expanding research for better analytics, 2) improving real-time care coordination and communication and 3) patient education, telehealth and population management.

Aside from the Kaiser HMO and the VA system, considered the nation's best examples of Health Information Exchange (HIE), there are two other such HIEs, Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) and Rhode Island Quality Institute (riqi.orrg) worth mentioning. They're mentioned here to introduce the idea of federated data management (as against the traditional centralized data management approach) by keeping ownership of data at source (Physician Practices) and introducing data lockers to get access to data for Analytics & Reporting purposes, thus minimizing data aggregation, normalization and security expenses. [26]

Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER), a program initiated in April 2009 by President Obama designed for the VA and DoD to lead the efforts in creating VLER (Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record), which would “ultimately contain administrative and medical information from the day an individual enters military service throughout their military career and after they leave the military.” VLER avails the eHealth Exchange to share prescribed patient information via this protected network environment with participating private health care providers, with exception of ‘scanned’ patient information. [27]


The Direct Project

Standards of information exchange are beginning to take hold for purposes of summarizing a patient record or event or allowing a provider to query for records across a community. The Direct Project aims to utilize these standards as well to replace methods of information exchange such as fax, courier, postal mail, and patients themselves that continue to slow down and predominate the health care field for transferring lab results, x-ray results, reminders for Dr. visits, etc. [61]

The project is sponsored by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) but led by volunteers in the industry. The Direct Project offers a simple, non-proprietary solution for direct information exchange between two healthcare entities. [51]

It is important to note here another emerging standard called Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR), also referred to as fire, that is expected to meet the standards of the market needs in the areas of Mobile HC apps, Medical devices and Custom workflows and also drive new efficiency in terms of care coordination, cost of care optimization, patient engagement and behavior influence of both care delivery folks as well as patients. [28]

Environmental

Electronic Health Records have the potential to improve the environmental footprint left by the health care industry. [29]

Decreased Paper Consumption

Using EHRs can greatly reduce the need for paper in an office setting. Instead of throwing away and shredding old paper records or documents and destroying trees, digital documents can be erased without another tree being cut down to make another sheet of paper. [30] As an eco-friendly software application, it reduces need for reams of paper and the environmental costs associated with it. [31]

Avoided Transportation

EHRs also reduce the gasoline consumption by patients by avoiding non-urgent medical office visits and instead using it’s services to securely message requests for prescription refills, ask clinicians questions, and conduct other virtual activities. [29]

Avoided Plastic Waste From X-Rays

X-ray film is composed of at least 57 percent plastic. EHRs ability to digitize and archive x-ray images avoids the waste of printing x-rays on plastic film. [29]

Medical Education

While clinical and operational benefits of EMRs are obvious, their effect on medical education and trainees are not well documented. The few studies that have analyzed such effects have shown that there are advantages inherent in EMRs that can be leveraged and disadvantages in the current EMRs to education that need to be addressed in the future [22]. Implementation of EMRs in academic environments can benefit education of trainees by:

  1. Increased accessibility to relevant and up-to-date literature for diagnosis and management plans via clinical decision support (CDS) systems within the EMR
  2. Training the students to follow accepted clinical guidelines (best practices) using CDS
  3. Monitoring clinical experience of trainees more efficiently in real time to optimize workflow for trainees and training programs. Use of EMRs to track patient care milestones achieved by trainees will identify that can be then addressed more efficiently in a prospective manner.
  4. EMRs have been used to help physicians improve the quality of their clinical skills. An example of this has been in Radiology. Radiologists do not routinely receive information on clinical outcomes of patients for whom they provide radio-diagnoses. Alkasab et.al created an automated outcome tracking system for radiologists which allows them to review clinical outcomes of the patients whose images they reported on. Such a system can allow radiologists to improve self-assessment, accuracy and relevance of their reporting, and study interventions in their processes to improve outcomes [47].

The disadvantages of EMRs to education were noted by the following issues:

  1. Problems with student access into the facilities systems such as obtaining log-ins and passwords
  2. Concern that students will not learn skills of independently recognizing items that need to be documented, but rather the students would only choose from drop down boxes and pick lists.
  3. Instructor's concern that EMRs allow portions or entire sections of notes to be copied and pasted, which in turn leads to ethical concerns with plagiarism and documenting procedures that were never performed.
  4. Trainees overly attentive to patient’s EMR data versus gaining information from physical examination and patient interactions
  5. Focus on engagement with computer terminal disrupts patient-physician relationship in exam room
  6. Automation bias - too much trust in decision support systems without consideration of their limitations

As EMR use becomes standard fare in medical practice, the benefits of using EMR need to be harnessed by adapting the training curriculum of medical students and graduate medical education trainees to incorporate EMR-related sub-competencies [32] [33]

Improving interpersonal and communication skills

EMR can reduce time of getting information and trainees can spend more time on synthesizing and demonstrating clinical reasoning in real time.

Enhancing professionalism

Detailed data provided by EMR can help doctors or other medical workers to convince patients more easily. EMR documentation can enhance professionalism among medical personnel by increasing accountability on the part of the healthcare provider to offer quality healthcare to patients.

Access to knowledge resource

Today, clinicians can get access to medical literature on the internet while making clinical decisions or reviewing patient charts. EHRs can provide links in a patient record to internet resources like PubMed, NLM, and OVID to show clinicians the most up-to-dated information and knowledge in medicine.

Financial

By consolidating information across the entire spectrum of clinical operations, from admission to treatment to labs and beyond, EMR allows for:

  1. Increase in the pace of information flow including service delivery.
  2. Coding/billing accuracy.
  3. Better capture of charges.
  4. Better documentation of patient encounters.
  5. Reduction in overall administrative and maintenance costs of healthcare institutions.
  6. Reduction in costs for the patient.
  7. Reduction in transcription costs [1].
  8. Decrease in malpractice insurance premiums.
  9. Decrease in paper consumption has the potential to lead to yearly estimated savings of $1.3 billion in the U.S. [34]
  10. Reduction in overtime expenses.

The efficiency of increased information flow and documentation allow for measurable time and cost savings. The amount of time support staff save during patient encounters has been directly demonstrated in a clinical setting [2]. Furthermore, the integration of EMR systems enables for a more consistent application of medical protocols, such as those that provide guidance on the use of specific or expensive drugs. As a result, the availability of information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, helps to contribute significantly to reduced errors, better decision-making, improved outcomes, and lower malpractice risk. In a study done by Harvard researchers, 6.1% of physicians with electronic records had malpractice settlements, compared to 10.8% without electronic records [35]

Another feature of EMR is the capability to eliminate paper-based informed consents. Paper consents get lost or misplaced very easily and this problem contributes $3.3 billion to the cost of health care in the U.S. due to resulting operating room delays for example. Electronic informed consents also help better reducing liability risk [57].

One financial benefit of improving care through the use of Health IT might be to lower malpractice insurance costs for providers. A number of firms that sell liability insurance for physicians are offering discounted premiums to practices that use EHRs.(Congress of the United States Congressional Budget Office. (2008). Evidence on the costs & benefits of health information technology (). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.) P. 13

Financial benefits include averted costs and increased revenues, which can be divided into three categories: payer-independent benefits, benefits under capitated reimbursement, and benefits under fee-for-service reimbursement [58].

Meaningful Use

Certified EMRs significantly aid healthcare professionals and hospitals in achieving Meaningful Use measures by means including:

  • Pop up alerts to providers reminding them to ask the patient for smoking status, medical history, ect.
  • Allowing providers to proactively see how they are doing and compare themselves to their peers

Several EMRs also dramatically increase the chance of hospitals and physicians collecting Meaningful Use money by providing reports to submit proof that those measures were met. When Meaningful Use measures are met and submitted, a Physician can earn up to $44,000 a year for 5 years and avoid paying penalties for not meeting the requirements [36]


Quantitative Benefits

These are financial benefits that are clearly measurable and are attributable to the use of a particular technology. E.g. the use of EMR technology to submit claims has resulted in widely quantified cost savings for provider and payer organizations.

In 2009, the Medical Group Management Association(MGMA) reported the results from surveying 1,324 primary care and specialty practice members. These results found that independent practices reported a median of $49,916 more revenue per full-time physician than paper-based practices. In addition, hospital-owned multi-specialty facilities reported a median of $42,042 more than their paper-based counterparts.[36]

One of the most widely touted financial benefits for physician offices is elimination of transcription services, which can save several thousand dollars per physician, per year. A 2010 article published by the American Health Information Management Association urges practices to realistically gauge their probability of eliminating transcription altogether. Many practices instead opt to retain some transcription, or implement voice recognition software in its place, mitigating the effect of this factor on actual vs expected ROI (10). Voice recognition saves physicians time in their clinical practices by allowing them to dictate notes for transcription either by software or by a human transcriber. In this manner, physicians are able to document accurately in free-text, individual descriptions of clinical conditions, histories, physical exams and plans. Additionally, the traditional discrete text fields of SOAP can be filled out with a greater level of efficiency while maintaining, if not improving, noting quality. [37]

The net benefit from using an EHR for a 5 year period was $86,400 per provider. [38]

Reducing cost

EMR can help hospitals or patients to reduce some redundant tests. For example, EMR could reduce the number of tests conducted at KCH by 7% according estimate by Julia Driessen’s report. A 1998 study at Brigham and Women's Hospital concluded that 8.6% of the tests sampled were redundant, and if those tests were not performed, charges would be reduced by $930,000 annually. (30) A review of studies looking at possible benefits of CPOE found significant evidence of reduced laboratory test ordering in multiples studies [38]. The use of EMRs improved the utilization of radiology tests, which also reduced costs for organizations in the study. [38]

Also, by SWOT analysis performed by Sameer Kumar. He said that nationally applied EMR can reduce paper to maintain medical records about 1.3 billion with a cumulative savings over 15 years of $19.9 billion.

Kuperman et al. (2003) upon reviewing the benefits of CPOE said that a reduction in medication errors would increase hospital savings. They found two studies showing that half of all of medication errors were due to ordering of a drug for which the patient had an allergy and the other half were because of incorrect drug and incorrect dose. (11) During physician order entries standardized computer order sets can assist physicians to select disease-sensitive drug and patient-specific dosing. Computer applications can also send alerts about patient allergies, drug interactions and monitoring of drug levels. In addition to reducing medication errors, EMR can help hospital savings on total drug costs annually by 15% just by recommending alternative drugs in the EMR reminders.[38]

Clinical support alerts and reminders can also assist with offering alternatives to expensive medications and updates on drug dosage recommendations. A clinical decision to utilize a generic drug substitution or decrease a drug dosage frequency from twice a day to once a day can offer additional savings to a healthcare institution, estimated at $16,400 annually per provider [38]Interventions to switch the twice-daily dosing of ceftriaxone to once-d

  • Provide users with real time knowledge
  • Reduce non-clinical time
  • Increase patient doctor time
  • Investment Motivationaily dosing at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH)resulted in $320,000 in annual cost savings (Kaushal at al, 2006).

Over a 5-year period and determined by the overall size of the particular health system and scope of the EMR implementation, large hospitals can potentially save between $37M and $59M. [39]

In 2012, at the Children’s Hospital in Boston, medical waste in general was reduced by 30% resulting in approximately $1.6 M savings per year [78].

Investment Flexibility

Another potential benefit from an EMR implementation is the increase in available operating budget. Reduce in staff expenses or lower drug and maintenance costs, for example, could significantly impact a hospital or clinic operating budget (Kaushal at al, 2006).

The meaningful use of certified EHR technology is a core requirement for healthcare providers looking to qualify for the incentive payments. In July 2010, the CMS issued the final rules, setting criteria that providers need to meet, and the schedule to meet them, to qualify for the subsidies. (15)

Management Risk Disposition

The following tenets are the willingness to invest in experimental efforts.

  • Provide users with real time knowledge
  • Reduce non-clinical time
  • Increase patient doctor time
  • Investment Motivation

To reduce cost, position for capitation/managed care, and gain market share. To enable providers to take advantage of financial incentives, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) lists related criteria related to "Meaningful Use of EHR technology". [8] In addition, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, along with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT requires that an EHR technology are constituted of the following five pillars as health outcome policy priorities (67):

  • Improving quality, safety, efficiency, and reducing health disparities.
  • Engaging patients and families in their health.
  • Improving care coordination.
  • Improving population and public health.
  • Ensuring adequate privacy and security protection for personal health information.

Inflow

Total benefits per year are known as the annual inflow (or cash-in). If Anytown Hospital can save $2,500 from chart pull and $2,000 from transportation in the year after implementation, inflow will be $4,500 in the first year. An EHR will bring more benefits to the healthcare organization as the staff becomes familiar with the system and eliminates the initial productivity loss in the following years.

The sum of the annual outflow and inflow is the net cash flow per year.

For example, Anytown Hospital will not realize a financial benefit in the initial year of implementation. The net cash flow in the initial year is -$12,500 ($0 inflow + -$12,500 outflow). [40]

Drug Surveillance

EMRs make it possible to monitor and correlate the side effects of drugs and treatment outcomes. For example, Kaiser Permanente had noted a correlation between Vioxx and increased risk of heart attack before the FDA announced their findings. [41]

EHRs also improve drug surveillance as there is a vast amount of literature published on features that are offered by an EHR to catch adverse drug reactions and adverse drug events. Features can include alert notification systems linked to physician portable devices to alert the patient of their health status. Adverse event reporting system have also been under-utilized and the reports the FDA receives greatly under-represent the true experience with medications in clinical practice. Institutions (e.g. hospitals) have used the AERS system more systematically, but now that EHRs are more widely in place in smaller independent community practices, the potential to build-in adverse event reporting becomes something feasible. [42]With these strides drug surveillance is increased and increase patient safety when drugs are prescribed and administered in the clinical setting.

Personal Health Records

Personal Health Records - A personal health record, or PHR, is an electronic application used by patients to maintain and manage their own health information (or that of others for whom they are authorized to do so). Patients can use a PHR to keep track of information from doctor visits, record other health-related information, and link to health-related resources. PHRs can increase patient participation in their own care. They can also help families become more engaged in the health care of family members.

With standalone PHRs, patients fill in the information from their own records and memories, and the information is stored on patients' computers or the Internet. Tethered or connected PHRs are linked to a specific health care organization's EHR system or to a health plan's information system. The patient accesses the information through a secure portal. With tethered/connected PHRs, patients can log on to their own records and see, for example, the trend of their lab results over the last year. That kind of information can motivate patients to take medications and keep up with lifestyle changes that have improved their health. Products such as FitBit allow consumers to record changes and sync the data to a smartphone to track changes. [8][10]

Ideally, patients will be able to link their PHRs with their doctors' EHRs, creating their own health care "hubs." Most doctors are not ready for that kind of change quite yet, but it is a worthy goal. A study has show that allowing patients to see their medical record, called OpenNotes, showed that patients 77 to 87 percent of patients felt they were more in control of their health when they could see their medical records. [43]

Although expectations for EMRs in the areas of data exchange typically span Provider to Provider data exchange for better care coordination at transitions of care, it is important to point out here emergence of another standard called, "Human API" which enables users (patients) to share their personal health records (PHR) with the EMR systems bi-directionally, regardless of how they're recorded, processed or stored.

Over a decade, VA has emphasized patient-centered innovations including MyHealtheVet (www.myhealth.va.gov), an e-portal suite of tools for Veterans and Caregivers that provides a secure web-based Personal Health Record (PHR), patient access to personal health information from the VA Electronic Health Record, the ability to download and share personal health information using the VA Blue Button, online services such as e-prescription refills, trusted health education resources, and Secure Messaging between patients and their VA health care teams.

A VA patient with an upgraded account has following benefits:

  • Engage in Secure Messaging with your participating VA health care team members
  • Request prescription refills
  • Access to key portions of your Department of Defense (DOD) Military Service Information , VA Wellness Reminders ,VA Appointments, VA Lab Results, VA Allergies and Adverse Reactions and other key portions of their VA electronic record ,VA Comprehensive Care Document (CCD) and involve in future features as they become available.[44]

Patient Participation

Providers and patients who share access to electronic health information can collaborate in informed decision making. Patient participation is especially important in managing and treating chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and obesity.

Electronic health records (EHRs) can help providers:

  • Ensure high-quality care. With EHRs, providers can give patients full and accurate information about all of their medical evaluations. Providers can also offer follow-up information after an office visit or a hospital stay, such as self-care instructions, reminders for other follow-up care, and links to web resources.
  • Create an avenue for communication with their patients. With EHRs, providers can manage appointment schedules electronically and exchange e-mail with their patients. Quick and easy communication between patients and providers may help providers identify symptoms earlier. And it can position providers to be more proactive by reaching out to patients. [45] [46]

As patient participation increases with EHR usage. The participants are able to increase their knowledge and become more proactive with their medical record. This will intern improve the service of care when a patient is admitted to a facility with an installed EHR and PHR integration. "Patients indicated they were interested in EHRs as a means of gaining more one-to-one physician access: 55% said they would like to use EHRs to ask doctors questions, 56% wanted to use them for refill requests, and 36% said it would be a valuable way to request referrals."[47] EHRs empower the patient increasing patient participation and improved overall health of the patient.

Snapshot of Improved Health Care Quality and Convenience for Patients

  • Reduced need to fill out the same forms at each office visit
  • Reliable point-of-care information and reminders notifying providers of important health interventions
  • Convenience of e-prescriptions electronically sent to pharmacy
  • Patient portals with online interaction for providers
  • Electronic referrals allowing easier access to follow-up care with specialists

http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/health-care-quality-convenience

Patient Safety Outcomes

EMRs increase patient safety and improve patient quality care by:

  1. Insuring practice of better evidence-based medicine
  2. Allowing flawless health information exchange between health care providers
  3. Decreasing cost due to changes in drug frequency, dose or route administration [38]
  4. Improving communication and engagement with patients and their health care providers
  5. Increasing patient medication compliance leading to improved overall health outcomes
  6. Promoting higher rates of reporting incidents and near incidents, ensuring greater numbers of completed reports and resulting in a more diverse pool of healthcare staff who report. [48]

EMRs insure the practice of better evidence-based medicine by developing evidence-based clinical and Good Clinical Practice guideline reminders that are prompted to health care providers during patient encounters.

The exchange of health information is greatly improved with EMRs because it can be delivered instantly and securely. Since the health care provider is entering the data into an EMR, medical errors are reduced from illegible handwriting.

The impact of computerized provider order entry (CPOE) on medication errors with the use of a basic CPOE system in an ambulatory setting was associated with a significant reduction in medication errors of most types and severity levels. [49]

EMRs help health care providers by alerting them to potential adverse drug events when entering new prescribed medications in the computerized provider entry forms (CPOE) for patients with allergies, incompatible medication interactions, and delivering medications to verified patients. CPOE systems address these problems, ensure patient safety and save associated costs and injuries. CPOE features that help to achieve this are patient-specific dosage suggestions, reminder to monitor drug levels, reminders to choose an appropriate drugs, checking for drug allergy and drug-drug interactions, standardized order sets, increased legibility, automated communication to ancillary departments and ease of access to patient data.[17]

EMRs allow pharmacists access to patient histories, past medication therapies, and current lab values. Clinical pharmacists have the responsibility of medication reconciliation, medication dose adjustments due to changes in liver/kidney function, transition of IV to oral therapies (in order to discharge the patient) and establishment of outpatient therapies. These areas of focus have shown to dramatically decrease length of hospital stay, increase beneficial patient outcomes, and decrease overall healthcare cost.

Use of traditional peer-reviewed approaches as a model for developing standardizations could serve as models for a foundation for new CPOE tools and as a benchmark for existing CPOE tools. For practically all major disease states, there are publicly accessible treatment guidelines that have been established by experts, undergone peer review, and are updated on a periodic basis. Using these review standards for development of protocols for drug-drug interactions, etc. improved accuracy and up-to-date information would be available and utilized to assist in protecting patients. [54]

Participants in the U.S. 2011 Physician Workflow study of office-based physicians responded that use of the EHR alerted them to potential medication errors (65%) and critical lab values (75%). This type of notification is a clinical decision support tool that many hospitals and providers use in their EHR. Clinical Decision Support is not limited to just alerts but can also inform a physician of immunizations needed for a certain age group or clinical guidelines. [50]

In other words, EMRs allow for Decision Support Systems (DSS) to be utilized. DSS detect critical values or errors in care and notify the clinician immediately. DSS may provide knowledge-based information and/or reminders to support or aid in finding a solution to a clinical problem (7). [49].

Improving patient care

EMR Benefits: Healthcare quality

Research

Researchers can use EHRs to retrieve up-to-date data from various sources around the country to advance their studies. EHRs can compute a report to show researchers certain trends in the population or common side effects of medications. [51]

The EMR allows researchers to efficiently search patient medical information by medical condition, date of treatment, physician name and test category. Researchers can quickly focus their attention on medical information that will support their research efforts, develop databases to study patient outcomes, and cross-check complex medical information.

Researchers can use the EMR to analyze large amounts of patient data more efficiently, quickening the use of new research findings to improve patient care [5].

  • EMR's increase the quality of medical data by recording coded rather than textual data. This, alongside the application of UMLS coding, will facilitate processes like data mining, data warehousing, in silico clinical trials, predictive modeling and any other mainstream research which requires data analysis. Also, by paving the way for automating data acquisition from other systems (like lab machines, imaging devices, barcode/RFID readers, bio-data sensors) error resulting from duplicate data entry procedures, manual file search and patient identification will decrease.
  • While EMRs have shown an increase in the quality of medical data, research is still conflicting on the cost benefits and efficiency gains of EHRs. A study of HIMSS Analytics Database data from California medical-surgical units showed a decrease in cost efficiency for Stage 1 and Stage 2 EMR implementation, and no efficiency correlation for State 3 EMR implementations (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20812460).
  • EMRs contain large amounts of structured and free-text data which can be de-identified and used for research without disclosing patient information. Pantazos, K., Lauesen, S., Lippert, S. 2011. De-identifying an EHR Database - Anonymity, Correctness and Readability of the Medical Record. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2011, 169, 862-866.
  • In addition to structured vocabulary searches of EMR databases, free-text search algorithms within and EMR can generate additional information critical to the identification of epidemics. Often, critical information is omitted by the clinical team when only structured vocabulary is analyzed. [52]

Bioinformatics

Translational Research Informatics (TRI)

Translational Research Informatics (TRI) is a sub-domain of biomedical informatics concerned with the application of informatics theory and methods to translational research (Translational research is the science is the project of bringing new knowledge from “bench to bedside.”) TRI mediates between and interoperates with the following: [3]

  1. Health Information Technology/ Electronic Medical Record systems
  2. Clinical Trial Management System /Clinical Research Informatics
  3. Statistical analysis and Data mining

Enhance public health surveillance

In addition to improving patient hospital outcomes, electronic health records can also improve public and population health outcomes as well. EHRs can accomplish this by improving reporting capabilities, ease the exchange of information across organizations, and improve communication between healthcare providers and public health officials. According to The Advisory Board Company, there are three key elements for successful population health management (The Advisory Board Company, 2014):

  1. Information-powered clinical decision making (e.g. robust patient data sets and integrated data networks)
  2. Primary care-led clinical workforce (e.g. PCP care team leaders and mobilization of community workforces)
  3. Patient engagement and community integration (e.g. map services to population need and overcoming non-clinical barriers to maximize health outcomes).

EHRs in conjunction with organizational improvement practices can help to address all three of these key elements. Incorporating electronic health records into public health practice not only improves public health surveillance, but also expands the communication between health care providers and public health professionals. In addition, organizations will be better able to track and prevent disease before an epidemic occurs. Through current government legislation, EHRs will assist public health research in achieving meaningful use(68). Many programs have already been implemented to begin this integration.

An example of successful EMR surveillance is displayed in a 2012 article of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, where the study focused on a model EMR-based public health surveillance platform, Electronic Medical Record Support for Public Health (ESP). It was noted to enable clinicians to provide high-quality surveillance data on notifiable diseases, influenza-like illness, and diabetes to public health agencies. This surveillance data can help health departments acquire rich and timely data on broader populations and wider sets of health indicators than is routinely possible with current surveillance systems. [64]

In 2013, New York City Public Health Department is set to launch a project to aggregate EHR data into a surveillance tool to improve public health in the city [24]. This project will monitor the prevalence of conditions such as obesity, hypertension, smoking rates, and flu vaccinations.

Tracking Epidemics

Electronic Medical records have the potential to help patients get better care and hospitals leverage best practices on a large scale. But the ability to quickly and efficiently compile and analyze vast amounts of patient data is also of critical importance when it comes to spotting patterns in a health emergency or in fast spreading outbreaks, such as a flu pandemic or salmonella. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and GE Healthcare are working on just that — with the official start of a project to evaluate putting EMR data to use in public health alerts. [53]

Improve Public Health Outcomes

EHRs can be very useful in managing health on groups of patients. Providers who have electronic health information about the entire population of patients, can look more meaningfully at the needs of patients who suffer from a specific condition and determine who are eligible for specific preventive measures and or currently taking specific medications This EHR capability helps providers identify and work with patients to manage specific risk factors or combinations of risk factors to improve patient outcomes.

[54]

EHRs are beneficial to the Public Health and preventive sectors of healthcare. As they are able to perform syndomic surveillance data submission, immunization registries and electronic laboratory reporting.[55]Public health officials can monitor, manage and prevent disease easier and faster without headaches. Patients will be more compliant with immunizations as reminders will be used when a patient has missed an immunization or is in need of one. Patient follow up percentage rates will also increase which is very important in the public health and preventive sector of care as follow ups are hard to maintain through paper based record keeping. EHRs will aid an organization in need of maintaining compliance with state and national regulation of meaningful use standards.

Better Evidence Based Practices

The patient data stored electronically increases the availability of data, which may in turn lead to more quantitative analyses to identify evidence-based best practices more easily. With availability of the aggregated electronic clinic data, more public health researchers are using it for the research purposes to benefit the society. The availability of clinical data is limited, but as providers continue to implement EHRs, this pool of data will grow. By combining aggregated clinical data with other sources, such as over-the-counter medication purchases and school absenteeism rates, public health organizations and researchers will be able to better monitor disease outbreaks and improve surveillance of potential biological threats. [44]

EHR's use of clinical decision support systems could also decrease the time elapsed between acceptance of evidence-based research and actual practice of evidence-based medicine. A report from the Institute of Medicine, To Err is Human, states that 15 years was the time frame that elapsed between acceptance of the evidence and practice. This time frame could be drastically reduced with electronic health resources. [52]

Pharmacogenetic Research

Patients' responses to drug treatment differ due to their genetic backgrounds. Such information is important to provide patient with optimized drug treatment.

EHR can improve the quality and efficiency of pharmacogenetic research works by providing the link between pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacogenetics. EHR also supporting the pharmacogenetic research with access to health record database. [4]

Clinical Research

How EMR’s Could Accelerate Clinical Trials (Front-end) [69]

  1. Study setup
    1. Query EMR database to establish number of potential study candidates.
    2. Incorporate study manual or special instructions into EMR “clinical content” for study encounters.
  2. Study enrollment
    1. An EMR can enable an organization to set up alerts so that a provider and/or study coordinator would receive an alert when a new patient is seen that qualifies for the study and prompt the provider to enroll that patient.[56]
  3. Implement study screening parameters into patient registration and scheduling.
    1. Query EHR database to contact/recruit potential candidates and notify the patient’s providers of potential study eligibility.
  4. Study execution
    1. Incorporate study specific data capture as part of routine clinical care/documentation workflows.
    2. Auto-populate study data elements into care report forms from other parts of the EMR database.
    3. Embed study specific data requirement as special tabs/documentation templates using structured data entry.
    4. Implement rules/alerts to ensure compliance with study data collection requirements.
    5. Create range checks and structured documentation checks to ensure valid data entry.

How EMR’s Could Accelerate Clinical Trials (Back-end) [69]

  1. Submission & Reporting
    1. Provide data extraction formats that support data exchange standards
    2. Document and report adverse events
  2. Evidence-based review
    1. Assess congruence of new findings and existing evidence with current practice and outcomes (incorporate into meta-analyses)
    2. Submit findings to electronic trial banks using published standards.
  3. Evidence-based clinical care
    1. Implement study findings as clinical documentation, order sets, point of care rules/alerts
    2. Monitor changes in care and outcomes in response to evidence base clinical decision support.
    3. Provide easy access to detailed clinical care data for motivating new clinical trial hypotheses.

The n-of-1 Clinical Trial

N-of-1 or single subject clinical trials consider an individual patient as the sole unit of observation in a study investigating the efficacy or side-effect profiles of different interventions. The ultimate goal of an n-of-1 trial is to determine the optimal or best intervention for an individual patient using objective data-driven criteria. The availability of electronically accessible data provides opportunities for learning from experience in clinical care; this can also referred to as evidence farming or using evidence macrosystem. Evidence farming can be characterized as a “bottom up” paradigm for clinical practices to incorporate practice data systematically as source of evidence, or and articulated form of clinical experience. [57]

Clinical Data Research Networks

Since electronic medical records systems allow for the capture and storage of records in a discrete data format many secondary uses of the data is made possible. By utilizing health information exchange communities can share and aggregate their data for research to improve population health. The compiled data can be used to improve patient engagement, improve regulatory oversight, share the results of studies across health systems, and increase the use of research to improve outcomes at member institutions. In New York City this very concept has been proven successful through a project funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and with the future adoption and utilization of HIEs more populations will be able to take advantage of these benefits. [58]

Improved Reporting Capabilities

An EMR has the capability of providing a more robust reporting environment with integrated clinical and administrative data, standardized clinical assessments and calculation of outcome measures[5].

Facing more and more complicated situation in clinical areas, doctors and other people need more up-to date data and knowledge to help them make decision. Thus, they use clinical decision support system (CDSS) to help them getting up-to-date information and selecting more appropriate remedy. EMR and facilitate this process by providing just-in-time data. In the end, practitioners can apply evidence-based medicine by EMR and CDSS. For example, surveys performed in resources-constrained areas like Kenya about HIV show that EMR based CDSS by many ways like Increasing Guideline adherence, reducing data errors, decreasing patient visit time, and ects. Researchers from King Saud University in Saudi Arabia also found the usefulness of incorporating EHR techniques in their clinical decision support systems. The team created a four-module knowledge-based system that incorporated algorithmic guidelines and EHR data mining (66). Guidelines used in the proposed system are the International Classification of Disease (IDC), SNOMED CT, LOINIC, and the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). The sophisticated system is projected to not only increase workflow, but also serve as a system for various entities to use as a consulting tool.


Structure to Clinical Environment

Clinical care outcomes may be improved by promoting the use of electronic checklists in clinical settings. A study from John Hopkins demonstrates a 0% bloodstream infection rate from intravenous lines after checklists were adopted as procedure. In addition, this lowered infection rate and also reduced medical costs that may have otherwise been associated with bloodstream infections. Another study showed reduced errors in positioning by surgeons for laparoscopic procedures. Major goals of checklists:

  • To educate
  • To serve as action reminders
  • To promote teamwork for best practices
  • To capture clinical data for reporting purposes

Electronic checklists are able to accommodate for any supplementary photos, images and documents with consistent formatting and can be found in a single and readily accessible location. [59]

Qualitative Benefits

The EMR will improve patient care by reducing medication error and wait time. Clinical processes will be standardized and there will be less variation in clinical care provided at one place from another. Records would be easily shared among the providers, which will reduce the process time and over all improve disease management. It will also improve the communication among the care providers and the administrative staff and administrative activities. The EMR can help the provider deliver the best quality of care because the EMR contains the complete patient‘s health history. In a crisis, the EMR provides immediate access to a patient's medical history, allergies, and medications. The retrieved information enables providers to make decisions sooner which otherwise they would have to wait for, like information from test results or other resources. This feature is very critical when a patient has a serious or chronic medical condition, such as diabetes. Also, the EMR information can be shared with patients and their family, so they can more fully take part in decisions about their health care. In addition, using decision support tools in EMRs help the provider to make efficient and effective decisions about patient care through clinical alerts and reminders.

These are directly and indirectly attributed to the technology but are more difficult to quantify. E.g. implementation of a clinical nursing system may lead to increased case in recruiting efforts, better nurse retention, more rapid access to clinical nursing data, and decreased charting time. Quantification and measurement – of benefits usually is difficult because of the task complexity of the nursing function.

Pinsonneault and associates found that data from before and after EHR integration, from a matched set of 15,626 patients with electronic integration and 15, 626 patients in a control group, who visited over 95 physicians in a large North American health network, show that patients treated through the electronically integrated system had better quality of care in the follow-up period and a higher continuity of care, compared to the control group [29].

Another overview of an attempt to quantify quality outcomes and cost reporting measures benefits of EHRs was published by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in 2010 and can be found here: http://www.himss.org/content/files/QPRWhitePaper.pdf

Improve Legal and Regulatory Compliance

EMRs can facilitate and improve legal and regulatory compliance in terms of increased security of data and enhanced patient confidentiality through controlled and auditable provider access [60]. In a study by Bhattacherjee et al, Florida hospitals with a greater adoption of health information technology had higher operational performance, as measured by outcomes of Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) site visits [60]

Up To Date Information About Patient at Point of Care

EMR can provide health information that is up-to-date with clinical information [61]. With an EMR, lab or radiology results can be retrieved much more rapidly. Test results and medical history are recorded directly into the EMR [62].

Increased Accuracy in Medication Administration

EMAR can help increase accuracy in Medication Administration. There are about 700,000 reasons annually—the estimated U.S. number of adverse drug events—for the increasing use of the electronic medication administration record (EMAR) to support inpatient care. With paper and other non-digital records prone to being incomplete, misread, or even misplaced, nurses need a way to help ensure that medications are properly administered and tracked. With the help of EMAR functionality and bar coding/electronic verification during medication administration along with real-time alerts, there is very little room for errors thus accuracy in Medication Administration most like happen at all times.

[63]

Personalizing Healthcare

After Visit summaries (AVS)

Stage 3 meaningful use recommends that patients or their authorized representative receive a clinical summary after each visit that is not just an abstract from the medical records, Most EHRs enable clinicians to supply patients with such information in the form of an After Visit Summary (AVS) that is generated from data entered into their medical records. The AVS should have relevant clinical information and instructions pertinent to the office visit. It should also be provided in a language other than English, when needed, within 3 business days of the clinic visit, and should contain more than 50% of the office visit clinical summary. Provision of the AVS is important, as physicians usually overestimate patient understanding of the treatment plan. Therefore, the AVS has the potential to improve patient engagement in their care and contribute to more personalized healthcare and share medical decisions.

Improved Documentation of Advanced Care Planning

EMR can be utilized to screen patients in an outpatient setting and prompt the physician to have a discussion about Advanced Directives. A study conducted as a QI improvement project showed that EMR-based reminders on counseling were effective in improving documentation rates of Advanced Directives.[59]

Targeted cancer therapy

EHR with clinical decision support help process the genomic data in the context of individual patient and provide dosing recommendation in a timely manner. EHR when intergrated into work flow can help realize personalized cancer treatment at the point of care. [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21568680]

Enhanced Patient Access

Some EHR systems provide functionality e.g. MyChart [10] for patients to access portions of their medical record, view test results, renew prescriptions, schedule appointments etc. These convenience features enable patients to engage in and take ownership of their own health care.

[6]

Integrated Imaging

With an EHR imaging can be integrated into the patient's chart electronically allowing for quick access to multiple imaging studies in high definition native formats rather than having to view them from film or on a printout. Having the studies in the EHR allows the provider to pull up the imaging with the patient quickly and easily. This improves patient communication and understanding.[64] On top of improved efficiency and communication from having the right information at the right time almost instantly, integrating imaging in EHRs can reduce costs as well. By no longer needed to store and archive imaging there are no more expenses for labels, jackets, or storage. It also reduces the workload of the staff since filing and retrieval is no longer necessary. [65]

Telehealth

Integrating EMRs with telehealth can improve the scope of telehealth and boost its benefits. Some benefits are:

  1. It can increase the access of healthcare to remote, underserved and rural areas
  2. It can address the shortage of healthcare providers. Primary care physicians and specialist consultants can serve patients remotely
  3. It can ensure continuity of care without increasing number of hospital visits.

For example, Texas prison system successfully combined a statewide EMR system with Telemedicine system of UTMB, which resulted in improved healthcare delivery for the inmates as well as huge savings for the state. [7]

Telehealth has become very popular due to the rural patients that can start receiving specialty services at their local communities. Some of the services rural hospitals can provide are trauma, stroke and intensive care. The adoption of Telehealth also supports clinical education programs. It allows easy communication between rural clinicians and specialists. Continuing education will also be easily accessed by rural healthcare providers. [66]

In one paper Telehealthcare showed to improve blood glucose checking by individuals with diabetes and resulted in the study participants to have tighter glycemic control, this may result in more widespread adoption of such technology for diabetes management. [67]

Special Care Access Network - Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (SCAN-ECHO):Through VA’s SCAN-ECHO initiative, Veterans and their primary care team can videoconference to seek expertise advice from specialists within 100-500 miles away. In 2013, SCAN ECHO spread to 46 rural sites of care with more than 100 participating rural primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. [68]

Increased practice efficiencies, cost savings, and reimbursement

EMRs help improve medical practice management by increasing practice efficiencies and cost savings. A practice can be made more efficient by using integrated EMR systems that can be used for scheduling, automated coding, and managing claims which save time as well. As one example, a clinic or physician practice can expect to increase revenue and decrease costs by converting the encounter form to digital format to reduce billing errors and revenue loss. Prompts for fields that need to be completed will reduce errors by an average of 78% according to one study [40]. Communication is enhanced among clinicians, labs and health plans as information can be accessed from anywhere. EMRs save money by reducing redundancies in medical care, by eliminating costly tasks of creating paper charts and labor intensive management of paper charts. Very simply, the EHR eliminates paper chart pulls and staffing expenses can be reduced as a result. One study estimated that an average of $5 per pull would be saved considering the time and cost of medical records staff to retrieve and then re-file the paper chart. The clinic studied expected it would reduce paper chart pulls by approximately 600 annually and transcription costs would be reduced by 28% [41].

There is significant evidence to show that while initial costs remain an issue, switching from paper records to EHR systems will ultimately reduce overall health care expenses. Documenting electronically is much less time consuming than documenting on paper allowing physicians more time with their patients and the ability to see more patients. [69] Historically, it has been difficult to identify and achieve a solid, measurable Return on Investment (ROI) following Electronic Health Records (EHR) or other clinical system implementation initiatives. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 has motivated system implementations, and the associated incentive dollars have offered a simple measure of ROI on the revenue side of the ledger, but this represents only one aspect of the substantial benefits clinical systems can yield. A proper optimization program, with broader consideration for the projects comprising it, can bring a truly positive ROI to healthcare organizations over a 10-15 year period if properly considered and executed. (Cumberland Consulting Group, 2013) Research indicates that Medicare and private payers could save tens of billions of dollars every year. To incentivize EMR adoption, the federal government has established a plan to provide $44.7 billion during 2010-2019 to financially assist health care providers in the EMR implementation process [4]. However according to Himmelstein, Wright & Woolhandler, as currently implemented, the use of Electronic Medical Records could moderately advance metrics related to quality measures, it does however not reduce the cost of administration of ‘overall’ costs. “Hospitals on the ‘Most Wired’ list performed no better than others on quality, costs, or administrative costs” (Himmelstein, Wright & Woolhandler, 2009). Forecasts of potential improvements in efficiency and cost-savings from implementation of computerized health care and the use of Electronic Medical Records seem premature at the time the authors published their data in 2009 [12]. According to DRCRHONO, physicians qualify to get $24,000 or more as part of the economic stimulus incentive offered by the HITECH act if they adopt a certified EMR. Incentives are given to providers who qualify. The stimulus includes $24,000 in Medicare Incentives or $63,750 in Medicaid Incentives. The government is putting in $19.2 billion dollars to help move all doctors off paper records onto electronic systems [62].

EMR implementations could affect physician and health system reimbursement in a number of ways. Some have argued that increased clinical documentation as a result of using an EMR will lead to increased billing and therefore reimbursement. Having an electronic health record can mean less time with filing claims or searching for documentation. If a physician works in many different locations accessing a patients electronic record from a different location is very easy. [69] An increase in emergency department billing among Medicare patients has been attributed to more complete documentation that allows for higher levels of billing [43]. However, given the pay-for-service model present in many facets of the American healthcare system, some of the cost savings possibly generated by the introduction of an EMR – such as eliminating unnecessary and duplicated tests and ineffective procedures – could lead to decreased reimbursement for the physicians and health systems.

According to a survey performed by the National Center for Health Statistics, in collaboration with the Office of the National Coordinator for HIT, it was found that 82% of providers report time savings when sending prescriptions electronically and that 79% of providers see increased efficiency when using an electronic health record. [70]

EMRs Help Manage Transactions

EMRs help better manage the “large number of transactions and handoffs” which can include: billing, physicians’ orders, prescriptions, nurses’ orders insurance information, and more. Having this information all in one place makes it easier for any staff member – from administrators/front office to pharmacists to physical therapists – to gain access to the patient’s records and read and notes that may apply to them. [6]

Physician Recruitment

68% of physicians surveyed by the National Center for Health Statistics report that the implementation and use of electronic health records is seen as an asset when recruiting physicians to their practice.[70]

Physician Satisfaction

An association has been shown to exist between EMR use and physician satisfaction with their current practice[76], as well as with their career satisfaction [77].

Patient Handoff

Patients can be safely handed off from one caregiver to the other. Especially CPOE reduces errors due to bad handwriting, verbal miscommunication etc. Implementing standardized, electronic patient hand off communication tools is known to have a positive effect on provider satisfaction and potentially patient safety. [71] Also, integrating sign off notes into EHR was found to improve physician workflow and improve physician satisfaction. [72]

Patient portals

Electronic health records can improve the relationship between healthcare providers and their patients. EHR systems make it easier for patients to access their medical records as opposed to the time consuming and expensive way of copying stacks of paper health records. Patients appreciated the ability to review their patient files which allowed them to be more comfortable and knowledgeable about their own health [25].

With the increase in use of patient portals, more patients and physicians are communicating via secure online messaging. Patients can request appointments, refills, review lab results, pay bills or ask general questions about their health via online portals. Online appointment scheduling is one of the most desired features of the patient portal followed by reviewing test results. In fact, Kaiser Permanente experienced a jump from 9% to 27% in patient registration once they added the feature to review test results [72].

Patients are more likely to ask questions via the portal because it offers private and direct communication with the physician. This enables the patient to feel comfortable to ask difficult -- and sometimes embarrassing -- questions, whereas the patient may refrain if he or she has to go through a nurse first. These candid questions offer better insight into the patient’s concerns, allowing the provider to be more responsive to the patient’s individual needs.[73]

Engagement of patients with their care is a benefit of these portals and the education they receive due to this engagement is also profound [55].

But first we must look at changing the behavior of both the physician and patient. Patients have always relied on their physicians as having all their healthcare information. Patients need to be educated on the importance of their involvement in their own healthcare. Physicians need to be shown how this will improve their quality of care to the care and what it will mean to their workflow. [74]

Patient Education Through PHRs

PHRs and patient portals can provide patients with vetted, high-quality information specific to their disease, condition, or health. Patient education, improved health literacy, and more patient engagement are seen as key factors in improving healthcare outcomes.[75]


Reduced Cost

EHRs can reduce the cost associated with "defensive medicine." By using CDS support and integrated reference materials if available, physicians can reduce cost by determining if a treatment or procedure is truly needed.[76]

Incorporating decision support within a CPOE not only assists a physician in practicing evidence-based medicine, it has also been demonstrated to reduce cost. Specifically, renal dosing guidance, specific drug guidance and adverse drug prevention have contributed to a net operating budget savings of $9.5 million at Brigham and Women's Hospital [21]. The average savings computed from the study indicated a 6-month savings of $3,450 per clinician. This is just one example of a study result measuring the impact of a specific CDSS in a specific EHR system in a singular clinic setting.

EHR with fully integrated CDSS will help to reduce antimicrobial expenditures of healthcare organization.Extensive uses of unnecessary antibiotic prescription will lead to unwarranted increase in hospitals antibiotic expenditures as well as It reduces drug efficacy due to drug resistance.Many large healthcare organizations have their own antimicrobial management teams(AMT).They help to improve standards of antimicrobial use including supporting staff education,clinical governance and policy development.A randomized control trial was done among the AMTs with CDS as intervention group and AMT without CDS in control group to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of CDS system for the management of antibiotic utilization.Result of the study was suggestive that AMT with CDS group able to reduce 23% of hospital’s expenditures on antibiotic.[77].

CDSS can also reduce healthcare costs through the presence of alerts regarding the compliance with prescription of formulary medications.[78] The process of drug substitution has been reported to be time-intensive and prone to inaccuracies . CDSS linked to pharmacy and insurance formularies can result in error free substitutions resulting in improved patient outcomes through the prevention of ADEs. [79]


Improve efficiency and patient throughput

The Institute of Medicine estimates that $17-29 billion is spent annually on unnecessary or inaccurate patient care due to misdiagnosis. If clinicians can rapidly determine the correct dose, calculation or diagnosis, they can order relevant tests and make appropriate referrals, saving time and eliminating unnecessary costs for the patients and the ED. Of course, CDS is most effective when it is built into the clinician’s workflow, which minimizes interruptions and dangerous distractions. It is also important for CDS to be incorporated into providers’ workflow in such a way that minimizes alert fatigue.[80].

Standardization of Practice

Although publication of evidence-based medicine abounds, it has been noted that physicians do not practice according to proven guidelines.[81] The reasons are numerous. One of them is that busy physicians do not have the time to read publications that have increased exponentially. [82] Another is the innate human limitation in the capacity to integrate information during decision-making.[81] This has led to a decline in patient care standards.[82] CDDS can increase compliance with evidence-based practice by presenting the needed information to the clinician at the point of care.[81] And while there is resistance to its use from physicians who view CDSS as an out of the box practice that is not tailored to their clinical workflow, it has been noted that incorporating factors such as patient-specific information, consideration of comorbid conditions, and organized and explicit presentation, might result in increased CDSS utilization. [83]

Universal Protocol

Universal protocols are developed by various disease monitoring agencies for accurate diagnosis, management and prevention of health related problems.For instance the universal protocol created by the joint commission to prevent wrong site,wrong procedure,and wrong surgery. [84].This ensures the same standard of care everywhere.

National and international effects

Growth, Job creation, and enhancement in the Commercial Clinical IT sector

The commercial marketplace for clinical IT products has evolved dramatically in recent years through corporate mergers, acquisitions, and other challenges to fledgling startup companies. Cerner Corporation and Eclipsys Corporation, two vendors of clinical IT solutions, have acquired the greatest share of the market. Other major participants include Epic Systems Corporation (Madison, WI), IDX (Burlington, VT), McKesson (San Francisco, CA), Siemens Medical Solutions (Erlangen, Germany), and Meditech (Westwood, MA).2,3 Industry analysts estimate that only 5% of the health care IT market has been penetrated, and this estimate has led to optimistic growth forecasts for vendors of clinically focused IT products as the market continues to mature.

Adapt to governmental regulatory changes and requirements

HIPAA and other legislative bodies often require specific requirements. Compiling information from thousands of documents could be needed to complete the government’s requirements, a feat that would be inefficiently labor and time intensive if done with paper records. Digital patient records helps administration and upper management to meet requirements and regulatory changes to satisfy legislative demands. With digital records, auditors can quickly see if physicians and hospital systems are government compliant and can easily point out if they are not, allowing the non-compliant party to correct their inadequacy. [85]


Barriers to EMR Implementation

System Selection

Based on the application the type of system selected will vary based on current research, size of practice, institution, academic affiliation, vendors and their ability to demonstrate compliance with current research “by identifying funded and published research(Kannry Mukani& Myers , 2006)” and ultimately the assessment and analysis of the total cost of ownership.

ONE CONSISTENT THEME emerges from EHR implementations in physician practices: almost everyone underestimates the complexity, time, and effort required. [86]

According to Kannry Mukani& Myers in their 2006 article Using an Evidence-based Approach for System Selection at a Large Academic Medical Center: Lessons Learned in Selecting an Ambulatory EMR at Mount Sinai Hospital . The authors note the technology requirements of educational institutions vary greatly from the needs of the private sector. Although both the private sector and academia have concerns with accurate documentation, patient safety and patient care, educational institutions focus on “education, training and research, (Kannry Mukani& Myers, 2006). The need of residents and compliance with regulatory requirements is significant and cannot be minimized. [13] According to Ajami and Chadegani, despite of the potential benefits of electronic health records, implement of this project facing with barriers and restriction, that the most of these limitations are cost constraints, technical limitations, standardization limits, attitudinal constraints–behavior of individuals and organizational constraints.[71] The most frequent adoption factors common to all user groups were design and technical concerns, ease of use, interoperability, privacy and security, costs, productivity, familiarity and ability with EHR, motivation to use EHR, patient and health professional interaction, and lack of time and workload. Each user group also identified factors specific to their professional and individual priorities [30].

  • In order for an EMR to be truly successful, proper and timely training must be administered to all who will interact with the system.
  • Conflicting research findings on the cost and efficiency benefits of EMR implementations will make it difficult, if not impossible, for administration staff to be confident in choosing an EMR for their facility. Until there is adequate research on multitudes of EMR systems that shows causal relationships between facility characteristics and the related EMR components there will not be a sufficient method of EMR selection and implantation.
  • If it is true that implementations of EMRs cause a decrease in efficiency and an increase in quality of medical care then further research must take both of these repercussions into account and determine if there is an overall net benefit of EMR implementation.
  • The use of EMR and the afforded efficiencies may not provide immediate cost savings to some office-based physicians. These physicians may not be able to reduce their office expenses sufficiently to offset the revenue decreases they may see as a result of increasing efficiency. For example, a physician who is paid, as many laboratory or treatment centers are, per service rendered would see a direct decrease in revenue were they to reduce the number of duplicated diagnostic tests.[8]
  • The reported barriers to adoption and MU of EHRs were not associated with serving a predominately Medicaid-insured population, and were consistent with barriers that health care professionals in other studies had previously reported. In fact, barriers to adopting and using EHRs that could be associated with Medicaid providers were issues specific to provider types who were eligible for the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program but not the Medicare EHR Incentive Program, specifically, dentists and pediatricians. However, all findings were useful in generating a set of recommendations that are specific to promoting MU of EHRs among health care professionals eligible for the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program. [9]
  • The variability of results of similar studies on the monetary and efficiency benefits of EHRs indicates that there is no single approach to EMR implementation that will fit all settings. Variables such as hospital size, setting, specialty, prior computer integration, etc will determine the effectiveness of an EMR dramatically and must be considered in all cases.
  • The high cost of basic infrastructure of clinical information technology is a substantial hurdle for many health care organizations, many of whose income margins have deteriorated after years of decreasing reimbursement (from Medicare and other sources) and whose access to capital for new medical technology is extremely scarce. Financial instability and scarce capital resources for IT infrastructure similarly affect small to mid-sized independent practice associations (IPAs) and independent physician offices, the practice venues for most physicians in the United States.
  • Diversity of products as well as lack of standards for common architecture of basic infrastructure of clinical information technology constitutes a barrier and further complicates EMR Implementation.

Costs

Cost benefit analysis is categorized into 3 fields [70]:

  1. Direct, one-time costs
    1. Hardware & Peripherals
    2. Packaged and customized software
    3. Network, peripherals, supplies, equipment
    4. Initial data collection and conversion of archival data
    5. Facilities upgrades, including site preparation and renovation
    6. End-user project management
    7. Project planning, contract negotiation, procurement
    8. Application development and deployment
    9. Configuration management
    10. Office accommodations, furniture, related items
    11. Initial user training
    12. Workforce adjustment for affected employees
    13. Transition costs (parallel systems, converting legacy systems)
    14. Quality assurance and post implementation reviews
  1. Direct, ongoing costs
    1. Salaries for IT and assigned end user staff
    2. Software maintenance, subscriptions, upgrades,
    3. Equipment leases
    4. Facilities rental and utilities
    5. Professional services, Ongoing training and
    6. Reviews and audits
  1. Indirect, ongoing costs.
    1. Data integrity
    2. Security
    3. Privacy
    4. IT policy management
    5. Help Desk

The financial commitment of implementing a CPOE system varies amongst facilities and depends on the facility's current hardware and software systems. The institution's current system needs to have a strong infrastructure in order to be able to enhance it's capabilities. The license for the software is but a small portion of the total cost. The larger expenses incurred will be a result of training healthcare professionals and support activities. Customer service and technical support should be available everyday 24 hours a day.

For more information, see EMR Cost Categories.

Challenges to Identifying a Return on Investment (ROI)

Evidence of a strong ROI business case for EHR implementation is confounded by anecdotal evidence in peer reviewed research and trade journals. Furthermore, environmental differences across provider settings make it challenging to replicate information system strategies and dependence on disparate legacy applications [48]. For organizational stakeholders to embrace EHR adoption, they need assurance that adopting an EHR system would positively impact business performance [58].

Additional barriers include:

  • Vendor supplied benefits data may not be objective
  • Few vendors maintain a structured database of benefits information
  • Peer reviewed studies are difficult to compare due to the complexity of health services delivery and variety of provider settings.
  • Differences in system architecture
  • Trade journals tend to focus on anecdotal evidence rather then empirical evidence
  • No standardized domain method exists to measure the ROI of electronic health records
  • Lack of information regarding maintenance and optimization costs [48]

Consequently, providers frequently lack the necessary information to make sound financial decisions regarding Health IT capital investments. Uncovering the true cost and benefit of EHR adoption will require a national effort to standardize and centralize evidence in a national database. [48]

EMR and Providers’ Productivity

Health care providers are adopting electronic medical records, but some doctors report a disturbing side effect. Instead of becoming more efficient, some practices, especially smaller ones are becoming less. As with all new systems, there will be a temporary reduction in productivity as the healthcare staff become familiar with the new system. A study by Menachemi and Brooks (2006) estimated a 20% loss of productivity for the first month, 10% loss in the second month, and 5% loss in the third month and finally productivity returning to baseline in the subsequent months. [87]. Several studies indicated that when physicians spent extra time entering data themselves, it cut down time spent with patients and stretched out their workday. [70]

In a study by Bhargava et al. which examines productivity impacts of electronic medical records (EMR) implementation in a large academic hospital in California. Bhargava et al. also investigate the dynamics through which EMRs may impact productivity. The study employ random effects model on panel data comprising 3,189 physician-month observations for productivity data collected on 87 physicians specializing in internal medicine, pediatrics and family practice. The total duration of data collection was 39 months. Bhargava et al. find that the productivity of physicians dropped immediately after EMR implementation, but began to recover in a few months and finally leveled-off. Additionally, Bhargava et al. find that productivity impacts of EMR are contingent upon physician specialty. Bhargava et al postulate that the fit provided by an EMR to the task requirements of physicians of various specialties is key to entangling the productivity dynamics. [71]

Return on Investment (ROI) Estimates

While barriers of determining actual ROI for EMR implementations exist, companies such as Dr. Cloud EMR are providing EMR and EHR ROI estimates based on each practice's details. This however does not suggest that it is entirely accurate and is only an estimate. DrCloudEMR is built by DrCloud Healthcare Solutions Inc, a wholly owned EnSoftek, Inc. subsidiary. [65] There are 2 main postulates for ROI which KOSH’s postulate and Sir Austin Bradford Hill’s criteria for Causation. Kosh’s postulate for CIS is i. The system or feature must be present in every case in which the benefit is observed. ii. The system must be isolated from the organization. iii. The benefit must be reproduced when the system is implemented in a new organization. iv. We must demonstrate that the system was used in the new organization. Hill’s Criteria for Causation includes (a) Strength of Association (b) Consistency of findings (c) Specificity of Association (d) Temporality (e) Dose-response (f) Plausibility (g) Coherence (h) Experimental Evidence and Analogy.

(a) Strength of Association tells us that the greater the change observed, the more likely the association is to be causal (e.g. If a EHR system is implemented and the CPOE feature greatly reduces medication errors, we could say that the implementation of the system had a causal effect on the reduction of medication errors and the strength of association is great).

(b) Consistency of Findings explains that if a change has been observed by different groups in different places with different circumstances and systems, the change is valid, so to speak. For example, if Company A (London, England, UK) implements System A , Company B (Houston, TX, USA) implements System B, and Company C (Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico) implements System C, and all three companies reduce medication errors using their respective systems, we can, again say that the CPOE feature of EHR systems can help reduce medication errors. It is important to note that the more consistent findings amongst different groups in different places, the better.

(c) Specificity of Association requires us to ask if there are any other factors which may have affected the change that we've observed. In regards to medication errors being reduced, one would have to ask if CPOE was the only factor involved. If errors could have been reduced due to other mechanisms in place besides CPOE alerts (e.g. better workflow in departments, new policies, etc.), the specificity of association could be considered weak. Weak does not imply wrong, but it does mean that more research has to be initiated.

(d) Temporality addresses the evaluation after an EHR system is implemented. Temporality asks us "were there any changes AFTER the system was implemented?" Usually this is harder to prove due to lack of data prior to EHR implementation, however, Sittig rates temporality as "strong."

(e) Dose-Response asks if the size of changes are directly correlated with the increase of system use (e.g. were medication errors greatly reduced due to the use of many medication alerts in the EHR system?). Usually, there is a strong and direct correlation between system use and the reduction of medication errors, as one example of a dose response in an EHR system.

(f) Plausibility must be shown; There must be some way to demonstrate that the EHR system was used the way it was intended to deliver certain results (e.g. Physicians must have used clinical support decisions the way the EHR system intended to reduce medication errors, in order to demonstrate plausibility.)

(g) Coherence simply states that changes caused by EHR systems should be caused by other EHR systems elsewhere. So, if medication errors are reduced by the use of one EHR system and that happens with the use of many other EHR systems, coherence exists.

(h) Experimental Evidence and Analogy is proving that when the system is not used properly or at all, that certain changes stop. So, if an EHR system is not being used properly or at all (after initial proper use), does a rise in medication errors resume? Experimental evidence is hard to obtain after EHR implementation because it requires not using the system for quite some time (which many would view as wasted money).

Sittig's Postulates

Dean Sittig, professor at UT Houston's School of Biomedical Informatics, has suggested a new set of criteria for determining ROI for an EMR implementation. Based on Koch's Postulates and Hill's criteria for causation, these criteria are designed specifically for EMR evaluation.

  • Must have the hardware and software available before the effect is identified.
    • Need to at least estimate state of affairs before system is implemented…manual review
  • Show that clinicians are actually using the system that could produce the effect.
  • Show that the effect increases with increasing availability and usage of the system.
  • Show that all obvious “alternative explanations” for the effect are false.
  • Show the effect goes away when the system goes away.
  • Show that a similar effect occurs when a similar system is installed and used at a similar facility.


Achieving ROI from EHRs: The value of various approaches

Modest ROI

Organizations implement the electronic health records(EHRs),then optimize. The chief medical information officer (CMIO) is charged with making the EHR work. Success is measured by whether the project is "on-time" and "on-budget" Lean Six Sigma Is the silver bullet ROIs difficult to calculate and too time-consuming to determine.

Next-Generation Value Realization

Organizations seek to optimize business and clinical result through value realization. Physician leader, such as the chief medical officer and the chief transormation officer, work with the CMIO to be accountable for value. "On-value" and "speed-to-value" will be critical measures of success. Lean will be combined with other methodologies to drive breakthrough innovation, performance improvement, and change. Financial, clinical, business strategy, and IT leaders will work together to create an organization value management strategy and approach.[88]

Strategic Benefits

These offer substantial benefits to the organization, but at some future date. E.g. investments in networking and telecommunications offer significant future strategic benefits, positioning organizations to utilize enterprise-wide patient indexing and EMR or distributed case management technologies as they emerge.

If EMR is fully implemented and functional, the benefits they offer are substantially than a paper records. Some of these benefits are:

  • Improvement in quality of patient care
  • An increase patient participation in their care (making appoints, refill of prescriptions, limited access to their records.
  • There will be an improvement in the accuracy of diagnoses and health outcomes-decrease of some types of medical errors
  • Improve care coordination
  • Increase practice efficiencies and cost savings [89]

Arlotto (2014) defends the right that EHRs are able to provide organizations the greatest value in the future of healthcare. She argues that this can be accomplished through the involvement of business, clinical, and financial platforms within an organization. As the healthcare industry is transitioning from volume to value based payment, organizations are increasingly depending on IT applications to facilitate the progress. She explains that our current healthcare practices use EHRs as an entity that simply automates the paper record and measure value based on direct cost-benefit analysis, rather than ensuring value realized over the lifetime of the investment.[90] Five commonly mistaken truths are further discussed in order to facilitate the transition for more efficient use of EHR. [90]

Achieving a Positive ROI

A key to achieving a positive return on investment (ROI) when implementing an EHR system is using it for more than meeting meaningful use requirements. A 2013 study conducted by Harvard University researchers showed that many practices that implemented EHRs showed a negative 5 year ROI. Citing only 27 percent of practices which adopted EHRs would show a positive ROI. The reason for this according to their research was that many practices were not using their EHR systems effectively. The practices which showed a positive ROI were able to use their EHR in a way that increased the number of patients they were able to see in a day as well as improving their billing to reduce rejected claims. The practices which showed a negative ROI were mostly still using paper charts heavily even after implementing the EHR system. This resulted in decreased productivity on top of the expense of the system. The most important step practices must take to see a positive ROI on EHRs is to take the time to optimize their use so they can improve efficiency and reduce costs.[91] Since the roll out of meaningful use many organizations and providers are still asking themselves if the use of this technology has improved the delivery and quality of patient care. Value can be defined in many ways and be difficult to measure. With that said organizations need to be fully committed to implementing the technology and follow up with post implementation optimization. [92]

Incentive Programs

In recent years, many providers have factored government incentive payments into the cost analysis and final decision to purchase an EHR. The Medicare EHR Incentive Program provides incentive payments of $44,000 over five years to eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and CAHs that demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHR technology. There's an additional incentive for eligible professionals who provide services in a Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA). Medicare eligible professionals who predominantly furnish services in an area designated as a Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) will receive a 10% increase in their annual EHR incentive payments.(29)

The Medicaid EHR Incentive Program provides incentive payments to eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and CAHs as they adopt, implement, upgrade, or demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHR technology in their first year of participation and demonstrate meaningful use for up to five remaining participation years. Eligible professionals can receive up to $63,750 over the six years that they choose to participate in the program. (11)

Beginning in 2015, Medicare eligible professionals who do not successfully demonstrate meaningful use will be subject to a payment adjustment. The payment reduction starts at 1% and increases each year that a Medicare eligible professional does not demonstrate meaningful use, to a maximum of 5%.(29)

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act law creates two key concepts to determine whether providers qualify for the health IT incentives: they must make "meaningful use" of IT and use a "qualified or certified EHR" (electronic health record). Besides incentives to providers and hospitals, the law also creates $2 billion in health IT funding administered by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). A significant amount of this $2 billion should lay important groundwork to help providers use health IT meaningfully toward the goals of improving the nation's health. (14)

Reference Laboratories

Reference Labs benefit greatly from interfacing with the various EMR's of the Hospitals, Clinics, and Physician Practices which utilize their services. Benefits include, but are not limited to: [93]

  • Decreased costs as a result of transitioning to a paperless system.
  • Decreased order entry time.
  • Decreased lab result response time.

Through the use of EMRs a physician is able to place a lab order for their patients in their EMR and have that information be conveyed electronically through the use of Health Level 7 (HL7)[94] messages to the system utilized by the reference lab. This saves time as the order will automatically populate within the reference lab's system and will not have to be manually entered.

Once the lab work is complete the results can be transmitted in a similar manner as the initial order to have the results populate in the ordering provider's EMR. This increases the precision of the results, and decreases the time required for the patient and physician to receive the results as the result would no longer require to wait until someone in the physician's office manually enters the results into the EMR (risking the possibility of errors).

Population Health

The benefits of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) on a large scale is that it can be used to increase understanding of disease trends and treatment outcomes as it relates to a larger population. (Hersh, 1995) [95]

Enhanced Collaboration Among Practitioners

An Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is also beneficial because it allows fellow practitioners to access medical records of patients that are seen by other medical practitioners. (Aaronson, 2001). [96]

Educational Benefits

Patients also are not left out of potential benefits of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR), as providers can provide patients with educational materials relative to patient condition and diagnosis. (Marshall, 1998). [97]


Misc, to sort later

  • E-prescribing will reduce number of physician office visit and phone call. phone calls and visits, Test results and appointments alert will be implemented and patients are automatically notified of test results and appointment times. [10] [11] [12]
  • Updates are done faster and files can be synchronized.
  • Duplicate orders and illegible handwriting will no longer be an issue is less of a problem [98]
  • Hard drives take up less space. Shared databases reduces the need for paper [13]
  • Billing is easier as the formatted documentation may improve the accuracy of charge capture.
  • Billing edits, including National and Local Coverage Determinations, can be alerted in real-time.
  • Patients arecan be informed of generic drugs, doctors can know if insurances do not cover patients, and formulary requirements can be identified.
  • Insurance and malpractice premiums can also be lowered. [14]) [15]
  • Different drugs can save hospitals money Hospitals will save money over various drugs [16].
  • Dictation is automatic
  • HIM staff may be reduced or staffing requirements changed [17]
  • Nurses will be more productive and more efficient [18]
  • Reduces medication errors and checks for drug-drug interactionsAdverse drug event (ADE), drug-drug interactions(DDI)will be detected thereby reducing errors in medication. [19] [20] [21] [22]
  • Reduces redundant lab tests [23] [24]
  • Reminders increase underused preventative measures [25]
  • deduce infections from a list of symptoms and help make doctors make good clinical decisions. [26] [27] [28] [29] The patient internet portal allows patients to know the most up to date information about healthcare. [30]
  • Telemedicine
  • Large scale data exchange and information integration [31] [32]
  • Surveillance and reporting of diseases [33]
  • Research information in the database [34]

Academic EHRs are functional systems that makes training for nursing staff more efficient. Student nurses apply their learnt skills to plan patient care in a simulated setup. This allows student nurses to develop their acquired knowledge in a practical setting and transition into a familiar working environment after their academic careers.([99].

Sources of Funding

  1. Organizational Reserves – provider organization make investments in affiliated organizations
  2. Bank and other financial service – short term loans
  3. Capital leases – used for large equipment acquisitions but can be negotiated for a major IT investment
  4. Vendor discounts and incentives – requires something in return
  5. Joint venture or partnership – tighter relationship
  6. Health plans and plan sponsors – contractual arrangement
  7. Private philanthropy – fellowships or university chairs
  8. Pharmaceutical companies – willing to conduct clinical trials
  9. Public grants – government initiatives
  10. State legislative initiatives – local and state initiatives
60. Interviews with John Kansky, Laura Adams (2014, 8) by Mark Braunstein, GA Tech.
61. What is the DIRECT project (2010, 10) by The Direct Project. http://wiki.directproject.org/file/view/DirectProjectOverview.pdf

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