If you are worried about switching your long-standing paper filing system to electronic health records (EHR), you are not alone. The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) published
survey results on March 30 from 349 practices with over 13,000 physicians regarding their EHR transitions and the results depict much angst among your peers.
Over half of the respondents described a significant or very significant loss of productivity during EHR implementation. About 65 percent said staff training significantly or very significantly affected their practices.
Moreover, nearly half of respondents reported that their practice management system would need to be upgraded.
But don’t throw your hands up in anguish yet. There’s hope that order will set in after implementing EHR.
Almost three-quarters of providers are at least somewhat confident that there practice will be prepared to attest to successfully meeting EHR meaningful use requirements in 2012 and 43 percent are at least somewhat confident that their billing service will be up and running.