Cost still deters many hospitals, physicians from implementing EHRs

Despite years of effort to transition from paper to electronic medical records, cost and uncertainty about who will benefit most remain obstacles for many physicians and hospitals, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported August 31.

 

Healthcare experts say efficient and interactive digital records can reduce administrative costs by more than $30 billion annually and help providers avoid potentially deadly errors, according to the article.

 

The federal government has cleared the way for hospitals to help physicians purchase software for EHR systems, but few physicians have accepted the offer, the newspaper reported.

 

A Harvard University survey earlier this year found that only 4% of physicians use a fully functional EHR system, according to the article. Another survey by the American Hospital Association found that 68% of the nation’s 6,000 hospitals use some sort of electronic medical records but that most of those systems only operate in portions of the facilities, such as laboratories or pharmacies.

 

Estimates of the cost of converting all of the nation’s health records into digital documents range from tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, the newspaper reported. The cost of conversion from paper to electronic records for a physician’s office can be $70,000 or more with additional costs associated with training and lost production time.

 

Click here to read The San Diego Union-Tribune article.