Revenue Cycle Essentials Analysis

The basis of the revenue cycle in Epic is the Hospital Account Record, often abbreviated as the HAR.

Indicating the capital justification expenditures is vital for the return on investment of a Per Provider for Electronic Medical Record Implementation. Several key aspects are necessary to mention of the amount and type of expenditure, attainment of key decision criteria, and detailed financial analysis. Hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory care settings even have to indicate important capital expenditures. Factoring in risk is always crucial to consider as well as physician acceptance, competition from HCO’s and volume and market data increase. Health care organizations and universities should be maintaining increased ROI and consistently improving areas of risk and HCO’s aspects to be mentioned in further detail.

The adoption of EHR has been slower than expected (Gans 1323). With numerous systems available, it is particularly difficult for a smaller practice to identify which system best meets its needs. Other notable challenges for some practices include assumption of the capital investment as well as managerial responsibilities associated with the IT infrastructure. A common implementation challenge encountered is the lack of a universal vision and definition of EHR. Since there are multiple interpretations of the definition of EHR and attendant requirements, identifying current and future needs is a complex process for potential users. Short term limited ability systems will eventually become obsolete as there is a move toward more global EHR systems. On June 18,

The traditional healthcare services organizations are expected to be transformed in the coming years, to include:

The number one thing I would look for in an EHR vendor’s product would be that it meets the CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) EHR incentives program of meaningful use and has been certified by the ONC (Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology).  This will ensure that the EHR program meets the core functions established by the IOM (Institute Of Medicine) Report from July 31, 2003.  I am not going to go into the core functions here, they can be found in the e-book for this class.

The software related Electronic health record implementation need to be appropriate for the needs of the organization and budget.(Swab, & Ciotti, 2010) The EHR software system has many areas of market depending upon the size of the hospital bed size. The first criteria for the vendors according to the bed with 100 and small hospital The Electronic health record system cost about between $ 1 million and 2 for the electronic health record system The electronic health record software cost for the organization about medium hospital cost is much larger than the first one. It comes around three to ten million. The hospital and organization with more than average bed cost for the electronic health record system will be higher amount than the other one. The cost and amount of electronic health record system will depend upon the size of the hospital . The management has to decide about the budget for the organization. (Swab, & Ciotti, 2010). The organization must evaluate its mission and goals in light of its particular strengths and weakness and in light of the demand for services and competition in the external environment. Based on that evaluation it can make a plan that will take advantage of opportunities like Electronic health record implementation according to the goals of an organization.(Finkler, Ward, & Baker, 2007).

Hence, EHR 's are inherently complex amalgamations of diverse subsystems targeted toward varied users. The stakeholders are the users and must have a role in implementing any IT or EHR system into its work flow. An EHR can be customized to accommodate any environment depending on the level of expertise of the vendor and how long they have been in the business of creating an optimum system that 's customized to fit the organizations needs. For the most part, EHR 's must be designed for efficient, error free use. Ideally, an EHR is a system that encompass all the subsystems that make a hospital meet "meaningful use" criteria to acquire incentives for adopting EHR into practice. In the next five years, EHR adoption will no longer be a luxury, it will be a "MUST". EHR 's and other health information technology will be a necessity to practice medicine (econsultant.com, 2010). Rather than purchase several standalone systems, it would behoove one , in my opinion , to purchase an EHR that would satisfy all the needs of the stakeholders, the physician , nurses and other hospital staff and all parties involved in the tertiary practice too. Although LWMS 's budget is not large enough to accommodate the full cost of implementing an EHR,

Anita Ground also stresses on the huge importance of this planning stage by using a concept of system life cycle. It consists of feasibility study, analysis, design, programming, implementation, and lastly maintenance (Ground, 2011, VA TMS training material). The analysis phase in particular would coincide with what the author Yoshihashi is presenting in figuring out office strategy and researching EHR options. Identification of stakeholders and system requirement would play a critical role in EHR adoption (Ground, 2011). Stakeholders would include patients, family, clinicians, billing, registration, and coding as well as the external users such as Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Bottom line is that the new system being purchased would need to provide meaningful use to the clinic based on the current certification standards.

However, there’s an enormous amount of money involved to acquire these advanced EHR systems. There are fears of losing the capital investment. According to Prasad (2013), “better medicine means stable business.” With EHRs capability to provide efficient healthcare services, it is helping in containing the healthcare cost. However, some CFOs have looked beyond the financial gains of the EHR implementation. “You have to look beyond that to the intangible benefits, the improvements in delivery care and position your organization to be competitive in the future” (“ROI: Look beyond,” n.d.). Indeed, EHR is a long-term investment for HCOs with a great promise for future

So much so that our political leaders and President Barack Obama have created a stimulus package called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Within this legislature, improvements to our healthcare industry and systems have been made with long-term financial savings in mind. As technology and uniformed data was becoming the standard in healthcare, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act has accelerated the speed. “The number of certified EHR vendors in the United States has increased from 605,6 to more than 10007 since mid-2008” (Sitting and Singh, 2012). Healthcare organizations now have no choice but to invest in a new

EHRs adoption is an essential part of improving patient safety and the quality of health care by reducing errors, allowing access to complete and accurate medical information to produce better patient outcomes. Although, it seems like a win/win situation there are still some challenges that appear when implementing an EHR. Some challenges would be Time, Cost, Work- Flow Distribution, Security/Privacy, and Interoperability just to name few. Interoperability is defined as the ability of a computer system or software to exchange or make use of information, which can create a major issue for any organization if these systems are not communicating properly. Security and Privacy are always a concern because implementing HIPAA measures is not an easy task. Not only do you have to comply with the federal level organization still need to recognize state laws which can often be more stringent. Especially, when you need to cover areas such as mental health, drug and alcohol services, genetic testing, HIV, and family planning issues. Change management would be enacted to overcome any issues involving process change resistance. It is a methodical approach and application of knowledge that use tools and resources to deal with this type of change. Methodologies would

In efforts to reform the United States healthcare system and create a nationally unified data exchange system the federal government has established an incentive program to eligible professionals and hospitals. The federal government has turned to certified electronic health record (EHR) technology to help facilitate the process of broadening health IT infrastructures. The federal government views EHR system used in meaningful ways as the key to reforming the healthcare systems. Meaningful use of the EHR systems can also improve the overall quality of healthcare, insure patient safety, as well as reduce the cost of healthcare to individuals (Bigalke & Morris, 2010, p. 116).

A wave of medical errors and patient deaths caused by healthcare providers renewed the search for a viable EHR system in 2000. Electronic health records would allow "providers to make better decisions and provide better

A multi-physician-owned primary ambulatory care practice and the board of directors seek to embark on implementing an EHR system that will enable the organization to meet the meaningful use requirements of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The decision to embark on the project was mainly driven by the incentive program offered by the stage I of the HITECT/ARRA, and to provide the organization with the capability to streamline their registration, billing, and bedside documentation process.

It can overall increase productivity and profit in the long-term. For instance, my workplace instills usage of electronic medical records for new and current patients for efficiency, productivity, and accuracy for the long-term of patients dental x-rays and health history. The costs involved are considerable and hard to calculate depending on the fees and licensing. According to, (Health Resources and Services Administration, 2016), a persistent problem is demonstrating a return on investment from an (EHR) implementation is often times challenging and may be even more difficult for smaller practices. The cost and effort involved from staff and management is difficult, but necessary to carry out productivity for implementation of (EHR). Every company practice is different and every practice must adapt to changes of implementing (EMR) for the duration of patient accuracy. Aside from the challenges, cost, and effort of implementing (EMR)’s in health care organizations, there is a desire to generate a return on investment (ROI) from them.