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Dealing with Upfront Costs of Electronic Medical Records
April 13, 2010 By: James Marvin
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Opting for electronic medical records can ensure to increase the efficiency and profitability of the medical practices. However, the initial installation of the EMR systems may involve some costs which could have great implications of small and medium-sized medical practices. This is because there may be many medical practices which may not be able to afford the upfront costs. The money which may be required to fund the adoption on a full scale will actually be in billions and therefore it becomes unrealistic to expect the government to adequately assist practices with these costs.
Upfront costs required to purchase and implement EMR could be arranged by following means:
Financial Incentives from the Federal Government
Some of the financial incentives from the federal government will be able to help the medical practices to invest in health information technology. This will be an important step in assisting the small medical practices to get the benefits of employing electronic medical records in their medical practice. Recently, the National Health Information Incentive Act has been recently reintroduced in this respect which aims at assisting the smaller practices but it will however direct Medicare to make add-on payments for office visits which are facilitated by EMRs. Another act that has been recently passed is the Small Business lending Act of 2007. This act has been passed by the Small Business Committee. This act will allow the small medical practices to borrow funds from the Small Business Administration in order to finance their information systems. It is important to assist the small practices in adoption of EMR systems as statistics suggest that almost 20 per cent of internists are having their individual practice and 50 per cent are in the practices of small groups of physicians.
Provision of Financial Incentives for Physicians
One of the major obstacles in the adoption of the EMR systems is the lack of reimbursement for using health IT. Some of the payers have now started offering financial incentives to physicians who use certified systems. A publicly funded agency called certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) has started endorsing the quality of hardware and software systems by issuing certificates.
No-interest Loans
Other efforts are also being made by the federal government to start offering no-interest loans to physicians in order to help them adopt implementation of electronic records in their practice. Substantial steps are yet to be taken in this direction. Some EMR vendors are also joining in with Government offers by offering EMR loans and packages.
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