Special articleA cost-benefit analysis of electronic medical records in primary care
Section snippets
Study design
We performed a cost-benefit analysis of electronic medical record usage by primary care physicians in an ambulatory-care setting. The primary outcome measure was net financial costs or benefits per provider during a 5-year period. The model was framed from the perspective of the health care organization, and the reference strategy was the traditional paper-based medical record. All costs and benefits were converted to 2002 U.S. dollars (27).
Data on costs and benefits came from primary data
Results
In the 5-year cost-benefit model (Table 3), the net benefit of implementing a full electronic medical record system was $86,400 per provider. Of this amount, savings in drug expenditures made up the largest proportion of the benefits (33% of the total). Of the remaining categories, almost half of the total savings came from decreased radiology utilization (17%), decreased billing errors (15%), and improvements in charge capture (15%).
Discussion
Our analysis indicates that the net financial return to a health care organization from using an ambulatory electronic medical record system is positive across a wide range of assumptions. The primary areas of benefit are from reductions in drug expenditures, improved utilization of radiology tests, improvements in charge capture, and decreased billing errors. Benefits increase as more features are used and as the time horizon is lengthened. In sensitivity analyses, the net return was positive
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Marc Overhage, MD, Homer Chin, MD, Barry Blumenfeld, MD, and Tejal Gandhi, MD, who joined three of the coinvestigators to serve on our expert panel.
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