Question: Since your predicted total margin for next year shows a decrease of .5 %, would you still go ahead with the EMR upgrade?
Be sure to support your answers with appropriate citations and explanations.
CASE STUDY: ABC Health Systems EMR
ABC Health Systems provides emergency and level I trauma services in a large metropolitan area with a population of 200,000. There are also two other level I trauma centers within 45 miles. The payer mix at ABC Health Systems is 60% government and 40% private payers. The total margin profitability for ABC Health Systems in fiscal year 2013 was 2.5%. In fiscal year 2014, total market is projected to be only 2% due to projected changes in payment from their major payer. As part of it's enterprise strategic plan, ABC Health Systems is in the process of expanding its Emergency Department by adding an additional 20,000 square feet of space. This additional space will allow the Emergency Department to provide expanded emergency services. The current process for documenting the patient visit is a combination of electronic and paper records. This hybrid method is less than efficient and sometimes causes records to be unavailable which increases the chance of medical errors. The information systems strategic plan calls for the purchase of a new electronic medical record for the Emergency Department. The choice of vendors for this new electronic medical record system has been narrowed to two. One vendor is T-Systems and the other vendor is PICIS. Your current hospital health information system is McKesson. Both T-Systems and PICIS offer open technology, device connectivity, system interoperability, clinical expertise and data analysis tools. T-Systems is able to install, test, train, and go-live within 4-6 months of contract signing. PICIS is projecting a go-live date of 6-9 months.