Thinking about 2011 and everything going on with the world of medicine, I pondered being in the shoes of a CIO or any executive running a healthcare practice. For all the advancement and positives, I cannot remember a time when they were so many unanswered questions about the future.
The new healthcare plan is slowly coming into affect and we are starting to see the consequences. There is no doubt covering more people is great (except my premiums went up 53%, ouch!), but doctors are feeling great uncertainty with respect to declining reimbursements and the healthcare plan could continue this trend. When revenues are falling year over year and patient volume increasing, it must be difficult to make any budget outlays, even small ones!
In addition, this is the first year of payments from the HITECH stimulus bill, creating a $44,000 incentive per physician to implement an EMR system. However, with meaningful use guidelines murky at best and every software company promising to meet these guidelines (even free ones!), this process is consuming any free time a physician or administrator has to dedicate any non-clinical projects. Given that the 6 billion set aside for HITECH will run out fairly quickly, I can certainly understand the scramble.
The sad part about all of this is organizations are assuming the EMR can take care of the charge capture portion and this is simply not the case. As we have heard from many of our clients, once the implementation is finally finished they are left wondering what to do when physician is rounding at outside locations. They have a fancy system, but yet there is still a lot paper involved!
Charge capture bolted onto an EMR system can ensure that patients are getting the best care, but the enterprise is still optimizing the revenue cycle. Win – Win!
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