American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009

 

The beginning of 2009 has shown interesting changes are in store for the healthcare community. HIPPA will be changing and become more strict. Protected Health Information (PHI) will be under further regulation while allowing some transparency in regards to the patients rights to review their PHI / EHR and disclosure practices. The next few years will be critical for clinics and hospitals to get their Electronic Health Records and Document Management Systems in place and up to standards. There are a few areas of concern we must address when searching for services.

 

            Today, approximately 23% of the medical community has some form of EMR / EHR. This allows for a huge potential for vendors providing outsource services. However, do you know where your Covered Entities (CE) PHI is going? Many large transcription vendors are shipping files across seas. The CE is responsible to ensure that relationships with Business Associates (BA) are up to standards. This can be hard to do when a BA is overseas operation or a front for an overseas operation.

 

            Once you decide to use a outsource service, do you expend hundreds of thousands of dollars to install an EMR that is not right for your clinicians? The answer is tricky. Large entities generally can afford to implement large EMR systems onsite. They have the IT resources and the infrastructure to support the endeavor. They typically choose a system that will integrate patient scheduling, billing, transcription, lab and various modules while keeping the clinician as a clinician and not a data entry clerk. These CE's should have systems that allow for outsource BA's to interact through HL7 interfaces.

           

One of the greatest challenges these giants will have is to efficiently allow for patients to review their PHI and EHR. They will need to adapt to the regulations that will allow for patients to audit and take control of their own records while maintaining privacy. This will be a daunting task as vendors of EMR's that are already in place are not under the gun to become compliant and stand to reap enormous amounts of money to make these CE's compliant.

 

            How does the small to large clinical practice adapt? How do rural hospitals and systems that do not have the resources to implement a large EMR compete and stay compliant? Why do so many clinics actually lose productivity?

 

Many companies like MediGrafix, Inc. are making the switch to electronic health records a profitable one. You may ask how does the integration of Electronic Health Records earn a return on investment or even increase revenue when there is so much talk about lost productivity? The answer to this is simple:

·        No costly software to purchase.

·        MediGrafix, Inc absorbs 99% of the IT costs.

·        Updates and upgrades are automatically applied at no charge.

·        Clinicians are able to produce documents the way that is most efficient - through dictation.

·        Compliancy is guaranteed.

·        All compliancy upgrades are done automatically.

·        Custom applications are completed timely and at 50% of Standard Industry Prices.

·        2009 - launching patient portal website.

 

These are a few benefits of using an ASP based platform to integrate your practice into the Electronic Health Record process.

 

Meanwhile, a typical onsite EMR for a single provider can cost $60,000 to $100,000 for just the software plus thousands a year for maintenance and IT support. All this expense while making that provider a data entry clerk ad reducing the provider's ability to produce revenue through patient encounters. If they let the provider just dictate, you still pay for the transcription as well. So you pay a ton of money, lose time to see patients (so revenue drops) yet they promise you a quick ROI. Does anyone else smell something fishy?

 

The MediGrafix solution - you pay a small percent higher line charge for transcription and you get the platform as part of the service. Example: A single provider paying $18,000 a year on transcription switches to the MediGrafix EHR platform and transcription service. Now his transcription runs $17,000 to $19,000 a year.

 

That same provider purchases an EMR for $60,000 and pays $5,000 a year in fees plus he still has to pay $18,000 in transcription costs. How is that provider going to recoup his investment let alone realize a return on investment? Bottom line - he won't ever recover that money.

 

Now, that provider would be able to use the MediGrafix platform for 60 years before it would start to equal the initial investment in a canned EMR if his transcription ran $19,000. It is easy to see why more and more clinics are moving towards an EHR based on their needs and practice workflow and not a canned EMR.

 

EMR's fail everyday due to high cost, zero ROI and a profound loss of revenue and productivity. ASP platforms allows a clinic to explore what they need in and EMR and realize that they do not need to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars on applications that simply do not meet their needs. A little caution and research can ensure you will not be one of the clinics that fail!

 

 

 

For more information on how MediGrafix can assist your clinic:

David Stott

20515 Nicholas Cir Suite 4

Elkhorn, NE 68022

P(402)333-3323

email: dstott@medigrafix.com

web: www.medigrafix.com