Are You Fully Leveraging Your EHR Investment?

By Greg Bartels, President and CEO, IPS Services

Electronic health records (EHR) systems can be extremely expensive to implement. The process takes months or years, and routinely costs millions of dollars. In short, it’s a significant investment of time and capital, even for the most well-funded hospital or healthcare institution.

Naturally, they’re going to want to get the most out of their investment. But if a hospital doesn’t incorporate its legacy backfile of patient records into its EHR plans, it won’t. Failing to account for records created before the launch of a new system essentially creates two methods of patient care – one using an automated platform, and one that requires costly, inefficient file storage and paper pushing. It’s the worst of both worlds.

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF EHR

For even the largest healthcare facilities, EHR implementation represents a significant investment, both in money and time. By deploying digital imaging techniques to ensure their entire backfile of patient records is accessible electronically, they can get the most out of EHR – above and beyond federal “meaningful use” rewards. And if done properly, the conversion process is affordable and 100 percent secure.

Hospitals constantly strive to utilize modern technology when it comes to the care of their patients. It only makes sense that they fully leverage it to care for their patient’s records, too.

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