How EHRs Can Reduce Healthcare Spending
Researching more ways to be efficient in Health IT
- Unnecessary care – The use of antibiotics and diagnostic lab tests to protect against malpractice exposure This accounts for 40% of healthcare waste ($250 billion to $325 billion)
- Fraud – Everything from fraudulent Medicare claims to kickbacks for referrals of unnecessary services. Fraud accounts for 19% of healthcare waste ($125 billion to $175 billion)
- Administrative inefficiency – Focused on excess paperwork. Admin inefficiency account for 17% of healthcare waste ($100 billion to $150 billion)
- Healthcare provider errors – These mistakes account for 12% of healthcare waste ($75 billion to $100 billion)
- Preventable conditions – Focused on hospitalizations to treat uncontrolled chronic conditions such as diabetes, which is less costly to treat when the chronic condition is properly managed through timely access to outpatient care. This accounts for 6% of healthcare waste ($25 billion to $50 billion)
- Lack of care coordination – Focused on inefficient communication between healthcare providers, leading to limited access to needed medical records and a resulting duplication of tests or inappropriate treatments. This accounts for 6% of healthcarewaste ($25 billion to $50 billion) as well.
An Electronic Health Record would greatly benefit these issues. Here’s how:
- EHR Systems increase physician efficiency, reduce costs, and promote standardization of care.
- EHRs grant access to unprecedented amounts of clinical data for research that can accelerate the level of knowledge of effective medical practices.
- EHRs also have the advantages of electronic medical records (EMR). Physical storage of documents is problematic, as not all document types fit in the same size folders or storage spaces, and organization of these documents can be time consuming.
