Electronicam Medical Records - Essay Example

Pay-for-performance could stimulate or encourage EMR adoption, as it would make many medical practitioners to learn how to utilize technology, so as to reach as many patients as possible. The capability and rewards of utilizing electronic records, will give the practitioners the capacity to fulfill the targets, set under pay-for- performance system with no trouble. Thus, when the in general performance is rated, and the entire number of patients attended by the practitioner is directly relative to the incentive, then the use of EMR will be obvious.

The fact that, being in possession of electronic medical records enables practitioners, to score higher in terms of quality measures, would certainly encourage the adoption of EMR (O’Neill & Klepack, 2008) Question 2 One of the advantages of cost–benefit analysis for IT adoption decisions is that, it assists in planning and budgeting, since it focuses on the probable financial impact of EMR implementation. Notably, cost benefits analysis emphasis on medical management, especially the billing operations, helps to realize the most financial gains.

Secondly, cost benefit analysis assists in gauging the strengths plus limitations of an IT adoption, and as a result, it is possible to conduct a bulk assessment with minimum time, when it comes to matters, such as accounting or clerical (O’Neill & Klepack, 2008). The downsize or limitation of using cost benefit analysis, is that , it does not sufficiently capture the benefits of IT adoption improvement of the quality, worker satisfaction, and above all patient satisfaction. The main reason is that, intangible assets, which make up the whole of the IT system, are hard to quantify, under the given economic terms within cost benefit analysis (Gunasekaran & Garets, 2004).

Secondly, the use of cost benefit analysis, tends to undervalue the outlay of daily operations to be precise cost benefit analysis does not adequately emphasize the chance cost of keeping hold of paper records, which is engrossed in a swiftly changing and multifaceted medical environment. Therefore, cost benefit analysis can turn out to be a rationalization for passivity plus inaction, resulting in paralysis through breakdown. Thirdly, cost benefit analysis does not usually take into consideration the regulatory plus reimbursement changes, such as the pay-for-performance which persuades or even mandates EMR implementation (O’Neill & Klepack, 2008).

Question 3 Continuing use of the manual system would still result in increasing costs of operating, such as paying extra staff to perform all manual work. If the practice had decided not to adopt EMR, then the cost of such a decision would be continuing increase of rejected claims plus unreimbursed services, due to inaccuracy in billing and poor documentation (O’Neill & Klepack, 2008). Question 4 The milestone that needs to be achieved, in terms of IT readiness, before a group practice decides to implement EMR, comprises getting the right hardware for the entire system.

Hence, there needs to be servers, computers, and right interfaces (Gunasekaran & Garets, 2004). Secondly, the team has to identify the best vendor to supply them with the precise information system, and the system needs to be confirmed to be in good operating conditions and not