Epic EHR costs driving healthcare organizations into bankruptcy

How would you like to drive your Healthcare organization into bankruptcy?

Beckers Hospital Review reported in their May 23rd, 2016 edition of the Hospital CFO Report that 8 hospitals’ finances suffered significantly by EHR costs.

This is just one article, but I also expressed concern over our Department of Defense and our Veterans’ Administration spending $11 billion and $5 billion respectively on a Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) EHR system where their final three considerations were

• Epic
• Cerner
• VistA

Given the cost and many doctor’s preference for VistA, it seemed wiser to many people to choose VistA. The VA developed VistA in-house specifically for the VA. Yet many other healthcare organizations use VistA very successfully. And this would avoid handing ownership of our sensitive government information to outside businesses. Information that only by people working for the government with security clearances should see.

And how can any healthcare organization leadership justify the ungodly cost of the COTS systems? Can any COTS provider give value justifying the exorbitant costs? Of these benefits, can professionals develop them for VistA at ten percent or one percent of the cost?

Going with Epic or Cerner seemes financially foolish as the VA had already been considering shutting down some hospitals to save money. Wouldn’t it be wiser to spend the $5 billion on care of veterans instead of buying another EHR solution when they already had an excellent solution in house?

What Expenses was the CFO Report Talking About?

Many. And substantial. Two major health systems reported costs expected to exceed $1 billion. Licensing fees. Implementation costs. Training, additional hardware, consulting fees, and operational costs.

The article that I linked to at the top of this article tells about the experiences of eight health care organizations that suffered financially.

The costs can be staggering and may cost your corporation it’s survival.