Increasingly smaller medical practices with the solo practitioner are going by the way side. Physicians are faced with increasing government regulations, ever-changing insurance mandates and higher operating costs. With the ACA tying the physicians’ performance into variable payment reimbursement, maintaining the bottom line will prove more and more difficult. In 2009 the government passed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act to support the widespread use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) as a way to save costs thru “meaningful use” (healthIT.gov, 2015).
How does the EHR impact health care consolidation? The Obama administration has tried to entice physicians, hospitals and health care providers …show more content…
Health care systems cite consolidation as a way to efficiently initiate a boost in revenue by adopting EHR software systems. So far there has been mixed results on the cost recovery of implementing and …show more content…
It should be noted that very few argue against e prescribing, but many argue against the constant “clicking in boxes” that restricts provider-patient conversations. Gains in efficiency have been offset by reduced provider productivity with providers citing an EHR “associated loss of 48 minutes of free time per day (Cebul et al.,, 2011; McDonald et al., 2014). Meaningful use criteria which started in 2011 with 15 objectives, and now in 2015 has a total of 20 objectives that must be met and attested to before federal stimulus money is released to the provider is time-consuming (cms.gov,2014). The release of stimulus money by adoption of an EHR into a providers office or hospital systems is meant to incorporate best practices and evidence-based care into a practice, not just the adoption of technology to fulfill a government mandate (cms.gov, 2014). Arguably EHR’s are here to stay and for the most part create more solutions than problems. Physicians will be forced to embrace them and will need to use them to their
How does the EHR impact health care consolidation? The Obama administration has tried to entice physicians, hospitals and health care providers …show more content…
Health care systems cite consolidation as a way to efficiently initiate a boost in revenue by adopting EHR software systems. So far there has been mixed results on the cost recovery of implementing and …show more content…
It should be noted that very few argue against e prescribing, but many argue against the constant “clicking in boxes” that restricts provider-patient conversations. Gains in efficiency have been offset by reduced provider productivity with providers citing an EHR “associated loss of 48 minutes of free time per day (Cebul et al.,, 2011; McDonald et al., 2014). Meaningful use criteria which started in 2011 with 15 objectives, and now in 2015 has a total of 20 objectives that must be met and attested to before federal stimulus money is released to the provider is time-consuming (cms.gov,2014). The release of stimulus money by adoption of an EHR into a providers office or hospital systems is meant to incorporate best practices and evidence-based care into a practice, not just the adoption of technology to fulfill a government mandate (cms.gov, 2014). Arguably EHR’s are here to stay and for the most part create more solutions than problems. Physicians will be forced to embrace them and will need to use them to their