Is Managed IT Services the Answer to EMR / EHR Cost Concerns - November 10, 2009
Orlando Florida -- There’s one aspect of health care reform that appears to contain a rare element of consensus: the push to digitize patient records, says Brian J. McCarthy CEO and well-known speaker on the subject of EMR migration and managed IT services from Sencilo HealthIT Solutions.
"Proponents have championed the goal of converting from paper to electronic formats for years, with the promise of closing safety gaps while improving the quality of care," says McCarthy.
But medical professionals in the trenches are worried about how to make the leap without incurring substantial financial losses.
Nevertheless, efforts among local administrators and technology companies are accelerating thanks to the dangling carrot of $19 billion in federal payments to assist hospitals and providers achieve the goal of computerized records.
Sharp Community Medical Group and Graybill Medical Group this month entered into a joint partnership to develop electronic health records, or EHR, strategies.
Last year, SCMG became one of the first independent physicians associations to implement the Allscripts Enterprise Electronic Health Record and Practice Management solution.
In many large medical groups, such as Kaiser Permanente, doctors already use electronic health records.
Yet overall, only 17 percent of U.S. physicians are using them, according to a government-sponsored survey published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Meanwhile, these computerized record systems are very expensive, complex to maintain, and change the way physicians and nurses work, all of which amount to widespread cause for concern.
“Unfortunately, the federal government has not taken a top-down policy and has left it to individual communities and practices to build up these systems alone, and that has led to a tremendous amount of anxiety” within the health care community, said Ben Kanter, chief medical information officer at Palomar Pomerado Health, a not-for-profit health care system in North County.
Electronic records hold data on a patient’s health history, medications, laboratory tests, treatment guidelines and so on. To proponents, the potential benefits are fewer unnecessary tests, reduced errors and more outpatient care as opposed to hospital stays.
Do-It-Yourself Model
But the question of how to build an EHR system and how much to spend are left to individual health professionals and administrators.
It’s up to them and their technology partners to create the most efficient way to achieve the government’s mandate of a wholesale transformation to electronic health records by 2015 or face penalties in the way of reduced federal reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid invoices.
Tom Sounhein, CEO at XiMED Medical Group, a San Diego network of 400 physicians, emphasized the enormous economic impact as the government prepares to disburse up to $44,000 as an incentive to doctors over a five-year span, starting in 2011.
“It seems like a good deal until you really do the analysis and take into account the ongoing costs after 2015 has come and gone,” Sounhein said. “So we’re trying to leverage the vendors to give us a deal based on our size.”
Sounhein said his company is in negotiations with an undisclosed technology vendor and just days away from sealing the deal. If an agreement goes through, the estimated cost to XiMED would be $36 million over 10 years.
“Subtract the $17 million that we’d get from federal funding and we’re upside down $19 million,” he said. “This is all a good thing in terms of what it can provide to patients and advancing the effort of transferring information. But it’s very daunting in terms of cost. Where is this money going to come from? It’s that sort of dilemma.”
Solution In The Cloud?
There’s no question that the promise of stimulus money has brought the issue of electronic health records front and center, according to Brian McCarthy CEO of Sencilo HealthIT Solutions, which provides business services to physicians in Florida.
The Escondido-based company said it has so far invested $3 million to implement EHR systems via cloud computing, an Internet-based service model, in which much of the computing firepower and data reside in remote data centers, which medical staff may collectively access via personal computers.
Sencilo HealthIT Solutions partners with Chicago-based Allscripts and sells their technology as a hosted offering.
“Everyone wants to make sure we give the right information to the right provider at the right time,” McCarthy said.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com
Why Sencilo HealthIT Solutions
When it comes to your healthcare computing needs, Sencilo HealthIT Solutions's main objective is to provide a turnkey solution that can essentially sustain itself. When you choose Sencilo HealthIT Solutions, you don't just gain a vendor who provides you with technology. You get a business partner who walks with you through every step of the process
Sencilo HealthIT Solutions eHealthcare Architecture: More than technology
With Sencilo HealthIT Solutions eHealthcare Architecture, you can leverage the same productivity tools and technology resources that have transformed business. And you get a full portfolio of services too. By working with Sencilo HealthIT Solutions, you can get:
A dedicated customer team
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Sencilo HealthIT Solutions Professional Services makes it easy
In addition to providing high-quality technology at a low cost, Sencilo HealthIT Solutions Professional Services can help you plan your healthcare computing from the ground up. By working with you from the initial construction phases, we can help you save time and money and lead to a truly customized solution.
Sencilo HealthIT Solutions Professional Services offers complete services that include:
Design
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About Us
Sencilo HealthIT Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in EMR EHR Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Dell Fujitsu Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Sencilo HealthIT Solutions NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection StorageX Brocade FAQ SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts Patient Data electronic health record P4P rules and the HITECH Act PayerView Rankings practice management tools $44,000 in Medicare or $66,000 in Medicaid from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act eClinicalWorks, Allscripts, NextGen, GE Centricity, and Meditech
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