Building a business case for EHR? Three places to hunt for ROI.

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Running on paper is no longer a viable alternative – you must have stellar documentation to justify reimbursements, mitigate survey/audit risks, and be ready to report outcomes to hospitals to win census.   Your reputation and revenues depend on it. 

As you sharpen your pencil to justify a major investment in people, process, and technology, it may be helpful to hear where others are seeing ROI.  The Center for Information Technology Leadership (CITL) value framework offers three areas to consider when building your business case from a healthcare technology perspective:  financial, clinical and organizational.  We liked their approach, and took liberty to re-frame it thanks to feedback from post acute providers who have achieved financial success with EHR. 

Financial ROI

Cost reductions include decreased administrative and resource requirements. Financial gains include revenue enhancements from improved, justifiable billing practices and charge capture as well as productivity gains from increased volume.  Average case mix increases with better assessments, plus incremental dollars with the addition of point-of-care documentation.

Clinical ROI

Clinical ROI includes efficiency gains plus the improved quality of patient outcomes through alerts that enable proactive care and earlier interventions. The average cost of each fall, wound, and incontinence episode, for example, can be estimated and a portion of the total savings of avoided events can contribute to ROI.  Medication errors can also be reduced substantially.  FTEs you have on staff for compiling reports and performing duplicate tasks (e.g., managing physician orders) can be reclaimed to drive better direct care results.  

Organizational ROI

Organizational ROI includes steps you’ll take with electronic health records, where you’re sharing information with fellow providers across the healthcare continuum.  The resulting higher outcomes will be attractive to hospitals and ACOs, who will in turn reward you with increased census – the fuel to move your organization forward in a difficult economic climate.

Building a business case is just one of 5 steps on the journey to full EHR; there are 5 steps in total.  Link to a free white paper to learn about all five steps.