It seems that electronic health records (EHRs) are constantly being touted as the next best way to improve both healthcare quality and medical practice profitability, but adoption of EHRs by physician practices continues to languish. The range for provider adoptions in small and solo practitioners’ offices, as determined by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is somewhere between 13% and 19%. The impediments to adoption of EHR appear to be cost, doubt as to the benefits, and uncertainty regarding new technology, despite some of the following claims:
§ The Alliance for Health Reform recently reported that “research has shown that computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems for prescriptions can reduce preventable medication errors by as much as 55%,”
§ Early Family Practice Management reports indicated that physicians are undercoding E&M Codes by as much as 33%, while overcoding by only 16%, leading to estimates that physicians are losing as much as $60,000 annually through coding inefficiencies and mistakes, and
§ The Institute of Medicine Report first indicated that as many as 100,000 Americans die each year due to preventable medical mistakes.
In the next month or so, Tucker Arensberg is planning to arrange a program that will assist you in evaluating EHR adoption. The purpose of the program is to explain the practical and contracting steps you must take to adopt an EHR program, educate you regarding the new federal Safe Harbors allowing hospitals to provide EHR hardware and software, and provide an opportunity for a hands-on demonstration of an actual EHR application as it would operate in your practice.
Since we are just planning this program, would do not have dates or times to announce yet, but I would be most interested in knowing if you would be interested in attending, assuming the times and locations work with your schedule. Please respond via email to mcassidy@tuckerlaw.com.