| There's been plenty of publicity surrounding EHR incentive payment timelines under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) meaningful use provisions for eligible medical professionals. Substantial incentives starting in 2011 are reduced with each passing year and then penalties start to kick in if your practice does not implement federal EHR requirements by 2015. This combination of carrots and sticks should give pause to any physician intending to wait before implementing EHR. There are a number of reasons physician practices should consider acting sooner rather than later. |
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Timing uncertainty: In looking at how long an EHR implementation might take, from start to the point where you've met meaningful use criteria, it's challenging to estimate how much time such a project will take. A wide range of factors can impact the implementation timeline, including your current office technology, workflow and processes. |
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Patient retention: With all the attention EHRs have received in the media, patients are becoming more familiar with the concept. With that knowledge comes the expectation that their providers offer the latest and greatest technology, particularly as larger institutions start to report significant error reduction thanks to EHR. At some point, patients will likely start to associate EHR with higher quality healthcare services. |
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Recruitment: If you're seeking to hire physicians, particularly those just coming out of medical school, and you cannot offer them important tools and cutting edge tools to help improve the quality of patient care, it may be more difficult to recruit talented physicians to your practice. |
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Financial: One of the most convincing reasons to act now is because waiting will cost you money. For example, physicians and practices seeking incentive payments through the Medicare route may receive payments up to $44,000 over five years if EHR usage begins in 2011 or 2012. By 2013, that incentive figure drops to $39,000 and by 2014 it falls even further to $24,000. Physician practices that wait until 2015 to adopt EHRs will not receive Medicare payment incentives but will at least avoid the 3% reduction in claims payments that will apply to those providers who haven't implemented EHR by the end of 2015. After that, penalties will increase with each year. For those practices that opt for reimbursement through Medicaid, similar incentives and penalties exist. |
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Diminishing resources: The shorter your timeline is, the fewer resources there potentially might be. Over $19 billion has been set aside for EHR incentives. Many eligible professionals are acting now and many more will be commencing the transition to EHRs in the next 18 months. With the rapidly growing demand for EHR products and services, it may be more difficult for practices to procure the services (or the level of service) you need. |
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| Start researching your EHR options now. HP, in conjunction with our software partners, can help your practice assess your situation and develop an EHR solution that will help to streamline your practice and deliver a higher level of patient care. |
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