Dive Brief:
- A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association has concluded that EHRs lower patient volume but simultaneously increase revenue over the long term.
- To conduct the study, Drexel University researchers compared patient volume reimbursement at 30 ambulatory practices for two years after their EHRs were implemented.
- Researchers found that practice reimbursements grew significantly, even with the number of patient visits falling. On average practices submitted claims for 94 additional ancillary procedures per quarter after the EHR implementation, though patient volume decreased on average by about 108 patients per quarter.
Dive Insight:
The study's authors concluded that their finding of increased revenues post EHR implementation "is reassuring and offers a basis for further EHR investment." Not only that, the fact that decreased patient volume delivered higher revenues suggests that EHR systems increased the practices' efficiency.
What's more, the EHRs seem to have increased revenues in an appropriate manner. Despite some reports that EHR implementations have increased revenue by encouraging upcoding, that did not appear to be the case here. Researchers wrote that they didn't find any indication of upcoding or a growth in reimbursement rates to explain the increased revenues.