Electronic Medical Records and Higher Costs

Virtually every Electronic Medical Record (EMR) vendor claims their system will increase efficiencies.  However, a recent study by professors at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business will “cast doubt on some of the savings” of these systems says Assistant Professor Michael Furukawa, one of the study’s authors.

“There’s a disconnect in the policy world that assumed that with all of the records moved into the computer system, nurses and other hospital personnel could spend less time running around looking for charts and that they would have more time to spend with patients,” says Associate Professor Raghu Santanam, another of the study’s authors. “While some documentation time was reduced, a lot of time at computers may have been added, especially at organizations just learning to implement the new technology in a likely transition period. Higher levels of nurse staffing were really needed.”