A number of hospitals in Northwestern Indiana are deploying EHRs or integrating disparate EHR systems across their facilities to qualify for the federal stimulus funds. They're not implementing purely for the money. Do the math.
Community Health System, based in Munster, Indiana, has EHRs in each of its three hospitals, but they're all different systems that can't talk to one another. The COO didn't say how much Community spent on the three systems, but it plans to spend more than $40 million across three hospitals and enable its 50 employed physicians and many affiliated physicians to access patient data from the EHRs.
Porter Health System, based in Valparaiso, spent $11 million in 2009 to enable its EHR system to share data. Methodist Hospitals' CFO said the hospital system will spend a total of $30 million over five years to deploy an EHR for its hospitals, physician offices and ambulatory centers. The Northern Indiana Region of Sisters of St. Francis Health Services is investing $105 million for the hospital EHR and $20 million for the physician and outpatient EHR, for a total of $125 million.
That's a lot of money. For some of these hospital systems, they're spending more money than many states are getting to create a statewide health information exchange! The St. Francis CEO said he hopes to qualify for $65 million in federal stimulus funding. While recovering some of the upfront spend is a driver for implementation or expansion, what is heartening for health IT proponents is that leaders of healthcare organizations are acknowledging that health IT helps increase patient safety and quality care, while decreasing inefficiencies. You don't spend that kind of money to get pennies on the dollar, unless there's a greater benefit to be had.
