Wednesday, June 13, 2007

EMR: Toys vs Tools

In an earlier post I wrote about the difference between toys and tools. I recently came across an article in the NYTimes regarding a 3 physician group who purchased a $140K dollar EMR with $50K in service contracts. In the article, the doctors state that the advantages of their system gave been largely non-economic: they have been able to downsize staff by 3 and have saved somewhat on transcription costs, but otherwise it has been a loss.

I can understand why. They spent too much and must not have really run the numbers. I think they purchased a very expensive toy, rather than a tool.

When buying an EMR, running the numbers and doing the analysis is everything.

More later/