Consider This...Healthcare Observations by Ralph P. Fargnoli, Jr.
8/28/09

ARRA Incentives or EHRs: Which is the More Important Means to an End?

This is the fourth of a four-part Summer Series that focuses on issues affected by ARRA

With Labor Day right around the corner, the clock ticks on for healthcare organizations jumping on the bandwagon to get their EHR plans into place in order to receive the maximum ARRA incentives. 
 
In recent years many healthcare organizations, wanting to transform their inefficient paper-based records into an EHR-based system, have lacked the necessary funds to do so. 
 
Now that the funds are finally within grasp, many healthcare organizations are focused on getting the maximum incentives, as they should be, as long as they don't have the unrealistic mindset that these incentives will pay for their entire EHR implementation. 
 
But, have they lost sight of what's really important here?
 
There is no doubt that incentives can be considered a means to an end for the implementation of EHRs. But, isn't the more important perspective the fact that EHRs are a means to an end resulting in improved patient care?  
 
Take a hospital in Osceola, Missouri, for instance. They have had recent layoffs and are operating under a large deficit. In a USA Today article earlier this month, it was reported that this hospital had borrowed $1 million to convert to EHRs "and hinging survival on what it hopes will be a $3 million windfall of federal incentives for hospitals that go digital."
 
"If that doesn't happen, we're shutting it down," said their CEO. "We're rolling the dice." 
 
Incentives should never be considered a "windfall." This hospital just doesn't get it. They are putting the onus on the government and treating the incentives as a panacea for problems that are obviously far deeper than what an EHR-based system can fix. 
 
Taking a step back, we need to remember that the heart of the HITECH portion of the ARRA is to improve a healthcare organization's ability to deliver quality patient care more efficiently. EHRs are a means to this end, will increase the chance for delivering quality patient care and, ultimately, contribute to saving more lives and reducing cost of care.  
 
If incentives aren't realized for a particular healthcare organization, the organization isn't the one to lose. The ultimate loser will be the patient because the "end" was never viewed as what it really should have been, improved patient care.  
 
Yet this "end" is in many ways only the beginning of the journey that the ARRA will afford the healthcare community.  We should never stop striving to improve for the sake of the patient.

Ralph P. Fargnoli, Jr.
President & CEO
Beacon Partners, Inc.

Questions or comments, contact
ConsiderThis@BeaconPartners.com

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