Hospitals and health systems are often unaware just how much an electronic health record implementation will cost, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Through structured interviews with staff members and executives at hospitals undergoing EHR implementations, researchers discovered four main cost categories: infrastructure (hardware and software), personnel (training team), facilities (space) and other costs, such as training expenses.
The interviews also revealed hospitals tend to underestimate costs across these four categories, and when money gets tight, they most often take the money from the training budget. However, the study's authors warn skimping on training could have adverse effects on patient safety.
The interviews were conducted at 41 hospitals in the U.K. that were implementing iSOFT's Lorenzo Regional Care, Cerner's Millennium and CSE's RiO.
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