EHR Investments Recovered Less Than A Year

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Some primary care clinics are seeing their initial EHR investments returned in as little as 10 months.

“The use of electronic health records (EHR) in clinical settings is considered pivotal to a patient-centered healthcare delivery system,” explain the authors of Return on Investment in Electronic Health Records in Primary Care Practices: A Mixed-Methods Study. “However, uncertainty in cost recovery from EHR investments remains a significant concern in primary care practices.”

According to Fierce EMR, the study found primary care clinics saw a quick turnaround on their EHR investments, sometimes recuperating their money in as little as 10 months.

Revenue increased in part because clinics were able to see more patients per full-time employee. “Our data show that the sampled primary care clinics recovered their EHR investments within an average period of 10 months, seeing more patients with an average increase of 27 percent in the active-patients-to-clinician-FTE ratio.”

Also, results showed “an average increase of 10 percent in the active-patients-to-clinical-support-staff-FTE ratio after an EHR implementation.”

Authors concluded, “We found that primary care clinics can realize a positive ROI with EHR. Our analysis of the variances in the time required to achieve cost recovery from EHR investments suggests that a positive ROI does not appear automatically upon implementing an EHR and that a clinic’s ability to leverage EHR for process changes seems to play a role.

“Policies that provide support to help primary care practices successfully make EHR-enabled changes, such as support of clinic workflow optimization with an EHR system, could facilitate the realization of positive ROI from EHR in primary care practices.”