MAN6935: The Business Case for Investing in EHRs in Doctor's Practice

This report analyzes the business case for investing in Electronic Health Records (EHRs) within a doctor's practice, based on the provided case study of Greenway Medical Technologies and supporting research. It explores the functionality of EHR systems, including data collection, vendor solutions (such as WRS Health and Practice Fusion), and their impact on doctor's practices. The report identifies key stakeholders, challenges, and opportunities related to EHR implementation, including data privacy, security, and cost considerations. It examines the requirements for a doctor's practice, the benefits of EHRs such as improved quality of care, and the importance of managing appointments, patient information, and time effectively. Additionally, it discusses the importance of compliance with regulations and the impact of EHRs on various organizational aspects, providing a comprehensive overview of the business case for EHR adoption and investment. The report also touches upon the Australian context, addressing issues like the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) system and vendor challenges.

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A system that provide a complete record
EHRs
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Table of Contents
Part 1: Data collection.................................................................................................................................1
The requirements for a doctor’s practice................................................................................................2
Software package solutions – vendor and software................................................................................3
Data Collection........................................................................................................................................7
References...................................................................................................................................................9

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Part 1: Data collection
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) is a system that provides many facilities to the organization
and mainly the doctors and patients in their practices use it. EHRs have developed in last two decades. A
software solution removes paper works from healthcare sector. All the records have converted into
electronic data, which can easily transfer and used anytime from anywhere. It was a technological
change in the health care sector. It provides many benefits into doctor’s practices and patient’s
treatment. It also provides benefits in business of the organization (Angst & Agarwal, 2009).
According to (Blumenthal & Tavenner, 2010), EHRs is software, which has a meaningful use. It is
provide a facility in a different way with less time and cost. However, implementation and maintenance
cost of the EHRs are high. In present time, EHRs software is available in more than $200 for per month.
Australian people say no to EHRs because of its privacy and security issues, which are a serious
concern in present era (Charette, 2018). There are many examples in front of people, which are related
to the EHRs, such as Australian Health Care System ( Duckett, 2018). Most of the hospitals were agreed
for adoption of EHRs for smooth working and taking competitive advantage. There is a strong reason to
avoid this facility, which is privacy and security of data and information of patients and organization
(Fernández-Alemán, Señor, Lozoya, & Toval, 2013).
Based on the ( Glance , 2012), everything is matter in case of health care. It is a sensitive and
confidential sector because of its relativity with the human beings. EHRs provide different facilities to
the doctors in their practices, such as appointments, precautions, treatment details, test results, and
many other things, which are necessary to provide quality care. EHRs have many characteristics that
make it more useable in the field on healthcare. It provides not only health record of a person along
with this facility, it provides financial record and remove medical errors (Hsiao & Hing, 2012).
According to (Häyrinen, Saranto, & Nykänen, 2008), EHRs make many changes in the working of
hospitals. It provides many facilities, which are based on the technology. From last two decades, most of
the people are connected with help of technology, such as smartphones, laptops, and many others.
EHRs software collects many data and information from the patient’s records and their results of
tests, which is useful for further research. Researchers were required large amount data to analysed
diseases and their treatments (Jensen, Jensen, & Brunak, 2012). EHRs provide different advantages that

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are helpful for doctors and patients as well as organizations. It provides improvement in the quality of
care and societal help through large amount of data and information about treatments (Menachemi &
Collum, 2011). According to ( Osman, 2018), Australian are lead in improvement of the personal health
care systems. They are providing support to make a better system, which provides privacy and security
to the data and information of patients. Beside it, Australia is a country in which personal health care
system is highly used to manage different operations of healthcare sector.
According to (Palvia, Lowe, Nemati, & Jacks, 2012), EHRs is a way to maintain different
operations of hospitals including doctor’s practices. It has many advantages that are beneficial for
societal point of view in long time. EHRs provide better facilities that have capacity to manage quality of
care and research in the field of medical science (Romano & Stafford, 2011). There are many software
companies in the Australia, which provides EHRs. In Australia, many rule and regulations are created for
EHRs and other decision-making systems because of their privacy and security issues ( Uzialko, 2019).
According to (Weiskopf & Weng, 2013), there is reuse of medical record, which is easily handled
with the help of technology. Therefore, EHRs are used for maintain health records of patients. In
Australia, there are many issues are occurred in front of EHRs vendors, because of its privacy, security,
and cost issues (Xu, Gao, Sorwar, & Croll, 2013).
The requirements for a doctor’s practice
A doctor faces many issues in their practices. In business context, doctors are uses many
technologies in their practices. It is a better thing that they have EHRs to overcome their issues. Doctors
has provided about the tests and different things, which are related to the patients. Doctors have
required proper record of patients to diagnosis diseases. Therefore, they charge based on the tests and
other things. Doctor faces appointment issues because of lack of knowledge and technology. EHRs can
manage their appointments in a proper way. Doctors have limited time in the hospitals. Therefore, it is
necessary to manage their time in proper way with the help of EHRs.
Doctors have a responsibility to secure information of patients and their treatment details.
Therefore, it is necessary to follow special regulatory and ethics in their practices. Doctors can
breakdown their appointments, operations, and research time based on the software. They provide
different services in the hospital, such as diagnosis patents, operations, guidance, and many other
things. In healthcare sector, patients, doctors, nursing staff, managers, and top management are key
stakeholders. Patients need best treatment for their disease in a feasible cost. They want best treatment

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in low cost. Doctors wants huge amount for their services. They have limited time for different works.
Therefore, they required high payment for their knowledge and intelligent work for hospital.
Software package solutions – vendor and software
In Australia, many vendors are provided EHRs system to manage different things of organization.
It is a technical solution of document-based work. In this field, digital technologies are highly used for
different purposes. However, most of the people are connected with the digital technology, such as
smartphones, and many others. In addition, EHRs system provides different facilities to the doctors and
patients in their diagnosis and treatment process.
WRS Health is type of EHRs software and it is an innovative solution that provides integrity and
accuracy in patient-care plans and improved quality of services. It is bets selected application in the field
of medical software.
It uses Linux Apache MySQL and PHP as a backend and it uses Linux-based web server from
Amazon Web Services (AWS). It has a good price for their product, which is $274 per month per doctor
that is a basic need of a hospital. In this software in a single practice 170 doctors works together.
Source: (Ferrill, WRS Health, 2018)

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Source: (Ferrill, WRS Health, 2018)
Source: (Ferrill, WRS Health, 2018)

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WRS Health founded in 2009, and it provides different services to many clients. It added many
hardware and software upgrades to improve services. Most of the clients are happy from services of the
WRS health.
Practice fusion is low rate EHRs system with mutual facilities. Every software program design
focuses on betterment of present system. This consciousness tends to be on a particular person. In
addition, maximum of the electronic medical record (EMR) systems are providing different facilities. In
this report, it has reviewed cognizance on either the health care provider or the exercise supervisor.
Some different merchandise, consisting of DrChrono and WRS health, try to divide the capability based
on the duties being achieved. Moreover, Practices Fusion has a great deal extra of an affected person
cognizance throughout this system and consists of patient enter as a fundamental part of the method. It
provides different facilities to maintain all the documents in proper way. To be successful, the
application should be truly prepared, visually appealing, and capable of flow the person seamlessly from
one discipline to the next without confusion. A business enterprise has opened a technical clinical portal
to provide help for untrained people ( Ferrill , The Best Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Managers of
2018, 2018).
One key indicator for any software program app is the quantity of schooling required to get a
consumer to an ok stage of talent to finish required tasks. The exercise Fusion person interface (UI) is
intuitive and follows a patient-centric design topic. The organization’s internet site gives an information
base repository of questions and answers to assist get you beyond any roadblocks. The organisation
additionally gives webinars and continuing schooling to get new personnel on top of things and
introduce new capability to the complete practice crew.
Different softwares are present in market, which provides different facilities that are helpful for
the doctor’s practice. EHRs systems are facing privacy and security issues in their implementation. In
2012, the Australian government released Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR)
system. PCEHR has developed properly but it has some technical issues, which are related to the
security and privacy of data and information (Xu, Gao, Sorwar, & Croll, 2013).
It had faced many challenges and issues in implementation process, such as impact of policy and
economic uncertainty, issues of unified approach, issue of transparent NEHTA operation, opt-in model
vs opt-out model, privacy concern, and effectiveness and usability issues (Howard, et al., 2013). EHRs
system makes impact on different things in an organization, such as Charting, ordering or reviewing lab

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tests, electronic prescribing, disease management, and preventive care (Palvia, Lowe, Nemati, & Jacks,
2012).
Practice Fusion is a strong product for the lowest fee of all of the EMR managers we tested. It
starts evolved out at ninety-nine dollar in line with month per clinician license. It is highly used in the
small sized clinics to manage their different processes in better way. This simple subscription consists of
superior charting and e prescribing as well as dashboards on compliance with the federal government's
meaningful Use, benefit-based Incentive payment system, and medical pleasant Measures hints. The
primary fee additionally includes unlimited labs and imaging connections (curemd.com, 2019). It
provides a dashboard to manage different functions of the clinic. The potential of the EMR app to
facilitate elevated compensation with the aid of tracking practitioner records enter factors can more
than justify its value (softwareadvice.com, 2019).
In addition, regardless of practice Fusion supplying compliance dashboards, superior charting,
and e-prescription talents as well as limitless labs and imaging connectivity, the price of exercise Fusion
is still much less than CareCloud and WRS health (Ferrill, CareCloud, 2018). DrChrono provides better
facilities as patient’s point of view. However, it takes huge cost for different functions (Ferrill, DrChrono,
2018). Thinking about the functionality DrChrono gives, practice Fusion is the maximum price-green
choice of all the goods tested ( Teague, 2018).
There is a difference between different EHRs systems, which is based on different perspectives
in below table.
Product WRS Health DrChrono CareCloud Practice
Fusion
AdvancedMD
Point-of-Care Modification
of Assessment Templates
Yes Yes No No Yes
Visual Organization of Data Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Fax From Patient Chart Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Automatic Medical Coding Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Alerts for Meaningful Use
Compliance
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Integration of Financial and Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

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Clinical Components
Voice Input Optionality Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Security of Data in Cloud
Environment
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Pen Input Yes Yes No No Yes
Pharmacy Location Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Patient Data Input Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Point of Care History of
Filled Prescriptions
Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Patient/Provider Messaging
Option
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Patient Self-Scheduling Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Customize Educational
Resources
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Customized Practice
Management Reporting
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Order Tracking Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Audit Log Embedded in
Patient Chart
Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Cloud Storage Unlimited Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Data Collection
Characteristics 1 2 3 4 5 6
Ownership Doctor Doctor Doctor Doctor Doctor Doctor
EHR McKesson
Practice
Partner
AdvancedMD Practice
Fusion
DrChrono Allscripts WRS Health Care cloud
Years in business 15-20 10-15 6-10 10-15 6-10 6-10 15-20
Years since
implementation
9 9 2 7 4 8 5
Employees 11-15 11-15 <=10 11-15 <=10 11-15 16-20

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Clinicians 4-6 1-3 1-3 4-6 4-6 1-3 4-6
Work flow re-
design
No No Yes In process No Yes No
In-house server Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes
First EHR Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
E-Prescribing Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

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References
Duckett, S. (2018, November 7). What can we learn from Australia’s My Health Record experience?
Retrieved from grattan.edu.au: https://grattan.edu.au/news/what-can-we-learn-from-
australias-my-health-record-experience/
Ferrill , P. (2018, September 1). The Best Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Managers of 2018. Retrieved
from au.pcmag.com: https://au.pcmag.com/cloud-services-1/58377/the-best-electronic-
medical-record-emr-managers
Glance , D. (2012, March 1). Everything you need to know about Australia’s e-health records. Retrieved
from theconversation.com: http://theconversation.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-
australias-e-health-records-5516
Osman, H. (2018, December 12). Australia leads the world in personal control of electronic health
records. Retrieved from healthcareit.com.au: https://www.healthcareit.com.au/article/australia-
leads-world-personal-control-electronic-health-records
Teague, W. (2018, October 9). Valuing a Practice in a Physician Practice Management Context – It’s All
About Salary, Sustainability and Succession. Retrieved from vmghealth.com:
https://vmghealth.com/blog/valuing-physician-practice-management-context/
Uzialko, A. C. (2019, January 2). The Best Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Software of 2019. Retrieved
from business.com: https://www.business.com/categories/best-electronic-medical-records-
software/
Angst, C., & Agarwal, R. (2009). Adoption of electronic health records in the presence of privacy
concerns: The elaboration likelihood model and individual persuasion. MIS quarterly, 32(2), 339-
370.
Blumenthal, D., & Tavenner, M. (2010). The “meaningful use” regulation for electronic health records.
New England Journal of Medicine, 363(6), 501-504.

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Charette, R. N. (2018, July 27). Australians Say No Thanks to Electronic Health Records. Retrieved from
spectrum.ieee.org: https://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/australians-choosing-to-
optout-of-controversial-my-health-record-system
curemd.com. (2019). Top EHR Software Vendors of 2019. Retrieved from curemd.com:
https://www.curemd.com/top-ehr-vendors/
Fernández-Alemán, J. L., Señor, I. C., Lozoya, P., & Toval, A. (2013). Security and privacy in electronic
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Ferrill, P. (2018). CareCloud. Retrieved from au.pcmag.com: https://au.pcmag.com/cloud-services-
1/58384/carecloud
Ferrill, P. (2018). DrChrono. Retrieved from au.pcmag.com: https://au.pcmag.com/cloud-services-
1/58379/drchrono
Ferrill, P. (2018). WRS Health. Retrieved from au.pcmag.com: https:///cloud-services-1/58378/wrs-
health
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Howard, J., Clark, E. C., Friedman, A., Crosson, J. C., Pellerano, M., Crabtree, B. F., . . . Cohen, D. J. (2013).
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Hsiao, C.-J., & Hing, E. (2012). Use and characteristics of electronic health record systems among office-
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Jensen, P., Jensen, L., & Brunak, S. (2012). Mining electronic health records: towards better research
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Palvia, P., Lowe, K., Nemati, H. R., & Jacks, T. (2012). Information Technology Issues in Healthcare:
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