Week 5

ROI- Do the savings and benefits outweigh the substantial costs?

In terms of tangible process improvement, yes there are substantial savings from the implementation of an EHR.  Fewer errors are one of the most important and cost saving benefits of the implementation of a new EHR. Care providers are able readily catch errors when they have a comprehensive listing of a patient's diagnosis and listing of medications. According to healthit.gov, the benefits of an EHR are:

1. A qualified EHR not only keeps a record of a patient's medications or allergies, it also automatically checks for problems whenever a new medication is prescribed and alerts the clinician to potential conflicts. 
2. Information gathered by a primary care provider and recorded in an EHR tells a clinician in the emergency department about a patient's life-threatening allergy, and emergency staff can adjust care appropriately, even if the patient is unconscious.   
3.    EHRs can expose potential safety problems when they occur, helping providers avoid more serious consequences for patients and leading to better patient outcomes.
4.     EHRs can help providers quickly and systematically identify and correct operational problems. In a paper-based setting, identifying such problems is much more difficult, and correcting them can take years.                 

Although the above may not be able to be accurately measured by tangible dollars, the return on investment from the implementation of the most updated EHR is obvious once one measures it by the errors it saves.  Therefore, patient safety is really what the ROI comes down to.