EHR Optimization
For Healthcare Administrators, salaries of their employee make up the largest portion of any department’s budget. Your department’s providers (approximately 20 Medicine specialists and subspecialists) are struggling with the implementation of a new EHR. They have pressured you to increase the number of COWs (computers on wheels) in the clinics and hire an IT analyst that can optimize the EHR to improve workflow in your clinics. The hospital administrator wants a estimate of the cost of hiring an employee solely for the departments IT optimization and the number of computers you will need (plus wiring). Your job is to create a ROI based on the data you provide. Doing your research, create justification for supporting these expenditures.
[Hint: Start by finding a suitable salary based on the market in your area, Research Employment Cost Index to gather a more accurate number, add the additional computers, then determine how much money this optimization will save the department on average]Things to consider:
What percentage of time do physicians perform non-revenue or clinical based work that does not require their level of expertise (or cost)? How much of a physician’s time is spent providing care that a lower cost individual could perform? How much of a physician’s time is spent providing routine transactional services that could be provided through a web based telehealth venue at 95% lower overhead cost?
- Physicians generate on average $2 million in net operating revenue annually (remember this when they spend unwarranted amounts of time on the computer during appointments)
- There are over 9,800 CPT codes, 16,500 ICD-9 codes, and 132,500 ICD-10 codes (This is important in optimization, do you want to reduce the number of options for your providers to decrease the opportunity for denials based on incorrect billing?)
- Quality/service metrics are comparable at lower cost when advanced practice practitioners provide routine low risk protocol based care.
- The overhead costs for web based telehealth services is $0.05/$1.00 for bricks and mortar based services (could this be an option to consider?)
I do not expect exact figures for costs, I do expect to see that you have completed thorough research for this project. Convince me to allocate a larger percentage of the organization’s budget to your area with a 1-2 page proposal highlighting “why” this is needed and “why” I should invest in this area. This is great prep for your final High Impact Practice Assignment which is due next week. Although submissions must be completed on an individual basis, you may collaborate with one another in your groups. Use this experience to help guide your final HIPs project.
