As most of you know, I’m a big fan of EHR. However, we still hear of many cases where the EHR isn’t living up to its potential. In most cases, they start talking about the ROI of their EHR software. While there are many reasons why a practice could not be seeing an ROI on their EHR software, the reality I’ve seen over all these years is that an EHR ROI is possible, but it takes the right focus, the right people and the right software to make it happen.
The benefits of EHR software are there and quite clear. What’s not clear is whether your EHR implementation is going to be done in a way that it achieves those goals.
While I still think that EHR selection is the most important factor in determining the ROI of your EHR software, this whitepaper called Improving the ROI of Your EHR: 3 Keys for Success provides a pretty good set of ideas as well. In fact, you should consider the 3 keys in this whitepaper as part of your EHR selection process.
Here are the 3 keys that they offer:
- Choose a Product that Enhances Profitability
- Optimize Implementation for Faster Time to Value
- Attack Meaningful Use in a Way that Maximized Value
The whitepaper digs into a lot more details on what each key really means.
As I look at those keys, I think:
- Do you have the right software?
- Are you implementing the software thoughtfully so you get to the value as quick as possible?
- Can you benefit from the government EHR money?
Of course, there’s a lot of dirty worked involved in each point. EHR ROI doesn’t come without work, but ROI rarely involves sitting back with a cold drink in hand.
An EHR system that has both medical dictation and a rich clinical narrative for documentation can help to improve the overall ROI of going digital. Having dictation built in allows doctors to be more productive as they spend less time entering data into a computer and more time providing care to their patients. A rich clinical narrative makes it easy for referring clinicians to decipher medical information to provide better care.