Electronic records save money, right?

Not so fast:

The CBO says that “both studies appear to significantly overstate the savings for the health care system as a whole”“and, by extension, for the federal budget” that health IT legislation could accomplish.

Comments

Anonymous
The Emperor has no clothes!
I have had an EMR for almost four years and, although good in many ways, it has not saved me 1 dime. In fact my costs have gone up. And, yes, it is CCHIT certified (another racket). Not one insurance plan has given me a bonus for having an EMR. Stop the hyperbole! All of this benefit of EMR’s is hyped by idiots like Newt Gingrich, as well as software companies that stand to make a bundle.
Anonymous
So true! I have had an EMR for eight years. The initial investment in software and hardware was over 50K. The yearly licensing fees and upgrades are about 5K. The cost to have a computer consultant to keep the system running is about 1K per month, as long as nothing goes wrong. Is it better than a paper system? Safer? Maybe. Does it save money? Absolutely not. And it never will. That is a fairy tale being sold by the computer consultants.
Anonymous
My pen cost $5 dollars (it is a nice pen) and refills are 25Cents.
And I have designed a paper record system that tracks the things that I want it to track both for practice management and clinically very easily. The only thing that I could do with an EMR that I can’t do is easily go back and retrospectively pull and compile data that I didn’t anticipate wanting.
I looked at EMR’s and even dabbled with writing my own (yes, I did database design ere I ever went to medical school) but I really couldn’t improve on my system which uses file cards, tickler files and spreadsheets. For the later I use both paper and electronic, depending on what kind of information and where and by whom it is to be recorded. For some things, a columnar pad sheet in the hallway that a staff person can mark with a pencil hash as without slowing as they walk down the hall can’t be beat.
Anonymous
I love computers, have had a lot of fun with them both building them and programming–but I refuse to use a computer in my work for something that I can do more easily, cheaply, and securely without one.

Electronic records save money, right?

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