You start finding a billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money...
More on the cost/benefit of EMR from Forbes:
In addition to funding an expansion of state Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the Washington Post has reported there are plans to allocate upward of $10 billion to implement a nationwide, interoperable electronic medical records (EMR) system. The investment could jump-start a flurry of spending on health information technology (IT).
This sounds ideal, but it's an expensive proposition. Campaign for America's Future, a liberal think tank based in Washington, D.C., expects a nationwide electronic medical records system to cost $7.6 billion a year over 15 years.
The high cost is due partly to the fact that few providers currently use health IT. By 2006, only 12% of America's physicians and 11% of its hospitals had adopted computer applications to help modernize their record keeping, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
But there's a potential return on the high cost. Last week, the CBO released a study estimating that the implementation of health information technology, including EMRs, could save $7 billion in the first five years."
You buy it?
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