Utilize your EHR to propel your medical practice’s financial growth !
What is the biggest pay-off of implementing an EHR ? For, many medical practices it is receiving the Meaningful Use incentives. But the costs of implementing and maintain an electronic medical record, are in comparison a whole lot more expensive than the MU check!
According to IT experts physicians should stop relying on MU incentives alone and do something besides implementing EHRs to make sure the benefits of working with an EHR equals the dollars spend on it. So how do you make your EHR to pay more dividends?
How successful have you been ?
Don’t listen to the physician down the road or what healthcare experts claim. To measure how far you’ve leveraged your EHR to maximize revenue and productivity, you need to listen to your individual voice cutting across all that cacophony. Generalizations are of little help when you are trying to get the best out of your EHR !
Track and measure key performance indicators…
To measure the performance of your EHR you need to analyse the impact it had on your lifestyle, workflow, productivity and collections. Right from the time you leave office to the number of patients you meet has a key role to play in the larger picture. It is myopic to think about just compliance issues and failing to rein in costs or ignoring the different tributaries that are a part of your practice’s workflow.
Questions that need to be addressed…
- How long do I work every day ?
- How many patients I get to meet?
- What is the average time spent to pull up patient charts ?
- What time does it take to enter patient information ?
- What is the amount of time I spend on non-clinical activities ?
- Has my documentation improved or worsened after implementing the EHR ?
- What is the impact the new system and workflow has had on my revenue stream ?
- Have my monthly collections increased or dwindled ?
- What is the volume of data captured per patient visit ?
- Has sharing medical information become more secure and streamlined ?
Confusing and contradictory…
Around 67% of doctors are looking to switch their systems and 45% of physicians complain that patient care has gone for a toss. 67% of physicians are dissatisfied with their EHR’s functionality. So EHRs are a bitter pill that medical practices will have to swallow, right? Another survey claims that 75% of physicians feel EHRs have improved patient care and 70% of physicians feel their data is safer now.
And both the surveys reflect reality and not numbers spun out of thin air. So, how can something, as simple as an electronic health record, be so contradictory ? The difference lies in how physicians have utilized their EHRs to drive up productivity and profits.
Here goes the presentation on how physicians can increase the productivity of their EHRs…
