Posted by: Clemson Eye in News
Greenville Journal, July 30, 2015
Our transition to electronic health records (EHR) has been lengthy, expensive and challenging in many ways.
Forty-eight percent of medical providers are currently using or implementing an EHR system. Having come through the process, we can look back and see some reasons why 52 percent of practices haven’t acted and perhaps offer some encouragement.
Practices that are Medicare providers will begin to see a 1 percent annual reduction in reimbursements this year if they have not converted to an EHR system. But those that have and can document “meaningful use” can receive incentive payments to help offset the costs of compliance. So far, only 0.1 percent of eligible providers have been paid an incentive from Medicare. We are proud to be among them and to have received Medicare approval on our first application.
The biggest hurdle to get over is the cost. It is extremely expensive, not only in the costs of hardware and software, but in staff time, training and hiring. Patient revenue dropped 10 percent in our first year as we reduced appointments to give the staff time to learn, to practice and to transition our hard-copy records to digital.
Unlike most new technologies, this is not one designed to save money by reducing staff. Quite the opposite: We added employees. The most significant change for us was the addition of an IT department and scribes – trained medical information specialists who electronically chart information during patient exams. Without scribes, doctors would spend their time typing on a computer rather than engaging with and assessing the patient. Scribes will help doctors become more efficient without sacrificing that essential face-to-face interaction.
In our offices, we found the transition a challenging mind shift. It is a different way of practicing medicine than many realized. We practiced and used role-playing extensively to acclimate our staff and help them understand the challenges for nurses, practitioners, and patients.
Still, despite our best efforts, not all staff adapted. I’ve seen talented clinical staff turned into poor performers. Not everyone survived the transition.
There will likely be no return on investment for medical practices converting to EHR. The big payback will be in the future focus of health care: delivering quality care with high patient satisfaction at reduced cost.
We’ll get there through mining the massive amounts of information the electronic records provide. That information will fuel greater strides in medical research and analysis. Through it, we’ll learn what works to treat diseases and conditions faster and better. Potentially, the information we can gain from aggregating and analyzing this health data is the biggest benefit of EHR.
Adopting EHR will be critical to practices that want to remain competitive and avoid federal cutbacks in the future.
Mary Lou Parisi is CEO of Clemson Eye, which has five locations in Greenville, Anderson, Easley, Clemson, and a Lasik center, Spectrum Lasik, in Greenville.
Click here to read the full article on the Greenville Journal website.
