InfoTech BULLETIN

The latest health information technology news and research

Analysis: EHR implementation averages $32,409 per physician

If your practice is on the small side and plans to implement an electronic health record (EHR) system soon, an analysis of 26 primary care practices- each ranging from two to 12 physicians- in the Dallas, Texas, area may provide some insights into the financial and nonfinancial costs you'll incur.

The practices studied made one-time infrastructure purchases of $25,000 each for switches, cables, and wireless Internet connections, found Neil S. Fleming, PhD, vice president for healthcare research at the Institute for Health Care Research and Improvement for the Baylor Health Care System, Dallas, Texas, and his fellow researchers. The per-physician cost for computers, printers, and scanners was $7,000. Additionally, annual costs to license software and pay for hosting, technical support, and networking equaled about $14,700 to $17,100 per physician.

When converted to dollar equivalent, pre- and post-implementation time related to the launch of an EHR system was valued at $28,025 per practice for network implementation activities, $7,857 for practice implementation activities, and what amounted to $10,325 per physician for end user-related activities.

All told, the total per-physician cost involved in implementing an EHR system through 60 days after launch, based on a five-physician practice, averaged $32,409- or $46,659 if maintenance costs for a year after launch were included.

Sure, but how's a computer's beside manner?

Having proved its mastery of trivia on "Jeopardy," IBM's supercomputer Watson is moving on to healthcare.

Watson's developers came to the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting in Orlando, Florida, in February with the message that the supercomputer can deliver healthcare answers at an impressive speed.

Watson whipped the competition on "Jeopardy" by using its Deep Question and Answer technology to analyze more than 200 million documents to produce the most probable answer each time a question was asked.

That same technology could be used to process and analyze the more than 10,000 medical papers published each year, says Robert Siconi, director of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. With an expanding database of medical knowledge in its servers, Watson would, in many cases, be able to produce answers faster and more accurately than physicians, IBM claims.

"In healthcare, we talk about turning data into knowledge. That's really what Watson does," Joe Jasinski, program director of IBM's healthcare and life sciences research says on IBM's Web site.

The company has partnered with eight major medical institutions, including Columbia University Medical Center in New York and the University of Maryland School of Medicine to provide information for Watson's database.

IBM says it expects to have a commercial product available in 18 to 24 months.

Mismatched Medicare incentives waste time, money

If Medicare's programs of incentives and penalties to promote the use ofe-prescribing and electronic health records (EHRs) have you feeling frustrated, you're not alone.

A new report from the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services failed to align the two programs causing physicians to waste time and money.

For example, the EHR program provides incentives from 2011 to 2016 and introduces penalties beginning in 2015, whereas the e-prescribing program provides incentives from 2009 to 2013 and provides for penalties from 2012 to 2014, when the program ends.

The GAO recommends eliminating the overlap in reporting requirements and aligning them so that qualifying for incentive programs or avoiding penalties under the EHR program also would satisfy requirements for e-prescribing.