Inside the stimulus package: Cash for using electronic health records

If you do not see Medicare patients, or if fewer than 30% of your patients are Medicaid patients, there is no rush to adopt EHR: You won’t receive any stimulus money for doing so. But if you do meet either of those qualifying criteria, there is urgency—you will lose money by delaying. For a practice that receives $44,000 in stimulus money because it qualifies under Medicare ($64,000 under Medicaid), that incentive will off set much of the cost of adopting EHR.

But such economic urgency begs the question, in my opinion. Today, EHR applications can streamline the workflow and operations of a practice. They can improve the quality of the care that you provide, return at least three times the cost of ownership (in my experience, working with numerous medical practices that use EHR), and calm the frenetic pace of your working day. Applications are robust, turning a practice “paperless” over 18 to 24 months.

The Bush baton is passed to Obama. Stand clear!

There’s no doubt: The Obama administration intends to realize the goal set by President George W. Bush to drive near-universal adoption of EHR by 2014.

True, little was accomplished to achieve that goal from 2004 through 2008. Why not? Was the physician community to blame? Yes, in part, because:

• many physicians were waiting—for the Federal government to pay them for their purchase of EHR or to give them a government-developed EHR
  
• Physicians are resistant to change—many insist that they are more efficient and productive in a paper-based system
  
• Physicians have claimed that EHR applications lack features that enable a “paperless” practice
  
• Physicians have complained about the expense of EHR applications.
  

Many pebbles, many ripples are likely

The Federal government won’t be the only driving force in EHR—so will academic medical centers, healthcare systems, community hospitals, and large physician networks. They’ll do so through implementation of so-called enterprise systems that are linked to private-practice EHR applications.

Last, take note that reimbursement schemes introduced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are quickly adopted by private insurance payers. Some physicians already see a decrease in premiums for their professional liability insurance because they use EHR.

I strongly believe that, for a number of reasons that make medical and management sense in a practice, now is the time to adopt EHR. Incentives offered by this year’s stimulus Act are just one more reason.