Why EHR? 

In day to day operations, EHR improves the quality of service health centers provide their clients by streamlining charting practices, adding information electronically to searchable database records that prevent the potential hazards of handwritten paper files, improving patient safety and alerting providers to critical information in real time.

In a speech shortly before taking office, President Obama pledged his support for EHR:

"This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests," said Obama. "It just won't save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs -- it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system," he added.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is already helping to make acquisition possible for community health centers, and soon incentives will be available for providers serving Medicaid and Medicare patients, including critical access hospitals.

And in a disaster situation, electronic records can make the difference between rebuilding and shutting the doors.

CHCA can demonstrate that perceived barriers to adopting EHR have been recognized, studied, and addressed for our member health centers: 

• The time savings alone for chart pulls - in daily appointment planning, accommodating open access scheduling, looking for lost charts, quality assurance reviews that can be done via computer, answering pharmacy questions on the fly, automated routing of patient messages, and more - adds directly to the bottom line in terms of human resources, and improves patient and employee satisfaction.

• Our implementation approach, joined with collaborative leadership and clinical championship, has led to a program that can alleviate productivity concerns during initial implementation.

• Varied training approaches, mentoring, and hands-on practice foster technology adoption by physicians and their teams, reducing their resistance to adopt new workflows and technology.

• Efficient use of EHR technology can readily lend itself to increased patient visit capacity, which ultimately will cover EHR costs. Under a collaborative and leveraged approached, estimates demonstrate that a productivity increase of less than one medical provider patient visit per day will more than pay for EHR. 
   

The bottom line is this: It’s not a matter of "if" an organization will need to deploy EHR, it’s "when," and CHCA has spent considerable effort on behalf of its members to develop the potential of success for all. The leveraging of member volumes allowed for favorable contract pricing, and the continuous pooling of resources permits the building of a high quality environment and depth of staffing model that a CHC may not otherwise be able to afford or develop on its own.

Further, CHCA looks forward to working with the soon-to-be funded Regional Extension Centers across the State and throughout the country to deliver high-quality educational workshops, one-on-one provider training, and ongoing technical assistance to primary care providers.  This exciting program under ARRA will further reduce barriers to EHR adoption by giving providers a trusted, vendor-agnostic resource in their quest for advanced health information technology.