Enter Your Email Address to Receive a
Copy of MedicExhange Member Demograhpics

It has become critical to avoid pitfalls when deploying Practice Management and electronic medical records ( EMR ) systems and in choosing the right service group to support an EMR deployment.

Eighty two percent of hospital CIO’s cut IT spending budgets in 2009 by an average of 10 percent, with one in 10 making more drastic cuts of greater than 30 percent. In addition, 66 percent of hospital CIO’s said they expected to be asked to make even further cuts in IT spending before the end of 2009. Close to 64 percent of the CIO’s polled agreed that it is impossible to balance demand with the need to cut costs. 

A little more than one-half of hospital CIO’s with more than 500 beds, say that Federal funding is "crucial" to their ability to implement EHR s.

To help drive adoption of EHR by 2015, the Federal government is investing $33 billion in incentives to providers. A PricewaterhouseCoopers' analysis shows that a 500-bed hospital could receive an average of $6.1 million in incentives to purchase, deploy, and maintain a government-certified, interoperable EHR system. By comparison, the average 500-bed hospital that fails to implement a system by 2015 could see a reduction in Medicare funding by $3.2 million or more, depending on their volume.

In the last decade, the successful management of a medical practice has undergone a radical transformation—largely driven by innovations in technology and the adoption of disciplined business processes borrowed from other industries. Developments such as the Electronic Medical Record and sophisticated Practice Management software offer two promising avenues for fast progress—provided you partner with a healthcare IT services vendor who can ensure your people and processes are prepared. 

One such healthcare IT services firm, Concordant, Inc.understands the Federal regulations and the new incentives that are now in place to encourage and accelerate the adoption of EMR and practice management solutions. Nearly half of all physician offices today use electronic medical records, often in coordination with a Practice Management (PM) solution such as GE Genuity, Allscripts or eClinicalWorks. With the recent passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, that number is set to grow. The HITECH provision of the act has set aside $19 billion for the advancement of EHR s. Concordant is firmly entrenched in this area and advising clients on opportunities for participation in this initiative.

Caritas Christi Network Services (CCNS), part of the second largest healthcare system in New England, knows first hand the collaboration that goes on between Concordant and eClinicalWorks because CCNS is leveraging Concordant’s expertise to achieve an integrated ambulatory EHR and practice management system to deliver to CCNS network physicians. Concordant, recently named an eClinicalWorks Preferred IT Vendor, is supporting CCNS’ goal to link various physician groups together from a population management perspective. Caritas Good Samaritan Practice Corp. in Brockton, Mass. was the first group in the network to implement the EHR system. That implementation, which took place in the fall 2007, was also part of a larger pilot project with the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative. Concordant reports that its induction into the eClinicalWorks Preferred IT Vendor Program will further assure that its clients’ infrastructure, implementation process, and support requirements will be met efficiently and effectively.

Whether GE Genuity, Allscripts or eClinicalWorks is selected, the adoption of new technology can be a long-term process, and can easily be a full-time job itself for months, a year, or even longer. It pays to identify someone who can champion the project and maintain daily.

Source: CIO

You can get more details about EMR & its related topics from our EMR User Group.