Week 10

I have completed my cost analysis and also learned what must be done so more hospitals and physicians begin using EMR. While I will explain this in my upcoming presentation, I'll give a brief explanation. The equation I must use to calculate the annual cost of record keeping is (Monthly Charge x Cubic Feet x Number of Boxes x Minimum Retention Period x 12 Months x 29 Departments) + Transportation Fee + Storage Fee + Data Entry Fee + Fuel Surcharge + Pickup Fee. The annual cost comes out to about $2.6 million. 

Compare this with EMR, which has two kinds: Onsite deployment, where the servers are at the hospital, and web based deployment, where the servers are with the company the hospital works with. The cost for each comes out to about $500,000-$600,000 for the first year, after adding labor costs. As a result, the savings for the first year would be more than $2 million if switching to EMR. However, after five years, the savings drastically increase, as the annual cost of EMR has a much smaller fee of about $4000-$8000 while the annual cost of paper record keeping  is constant. Thus, EMR would save a hospital about $10.5 million after five years.

While EMR saves a lot of money, it takes time to go through all the departments and data systems to compile the data. In fact, it takes longer to retrieve data from an EMR than a warehouse. Thus, a linked or singular data system must be established for more physicians to start adopting EMRs.