Over the past few years, Electronic Medical Record (EMR) solutions have transformed the way the entire healthcare industry does things. Health sectors, most especially home health and hospice care, can now focus on providing quality patient care, without compromising Medicare compliance. With the mobile nature of both sectors, the need for cloud-based EMRs has been more prevalent. However, like in any other matter, a common concern among agencies who are either switching from a manual system or from an on-premise EMR, are costs. Indeed, what factors do agencies have to consider when subscribing to a cloud-based EMR? To answer this important question, we give you the top 3 costs you should look out for in a cloud-based EMR.

1. Upfront Costs

Upfront costs refer to the charges associated with installing or setting up the EMR. Setup or installation fees are paid upfront and are usually one-time payments in nature. These may cover the configuration of your systems as well as any technical support required in the EMR implementation. The setup process may also be more complex and thus, more expensive if you are switching from a manual system as this will entail conversion of your paper records to digital ones.

2. Recurring Costs

Cloud-based EMRs usually adopt a subscription pricing model. With this, agencies pay a monthly subscription fee for the maintenance, customer support, and software updates or upgrades. If your agency subscribed to premium support offerings such as longer customer support hours or extra features, they would also be included in the monthly payments and are therefore considered as recurring costs.

3.  Special Costs

Special costs are called as such because you may opt out of these costs based on your agency’s needs. These may include customization of your note templates, reports and analytics as well as the integration of your existing systems for billing, coding, or scheduling with the EMR. Should you need to store higher volumes of patient data, you can also purchase more storage space.On top of these three cost categories, you would also need to factor into your decision the costs for data migration, training, and initial productivity losses while your staff gets to speed with the new EMR. It is however worth highlighting that your costs will be based on your needs so you would need to be clear about your expectations and requirements first before choosing an EMR.
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Data Soft Logic, as your Intelligent Care Partner, is ready to be the software that is always on your side. As such, to lessen your worries about costs, we are offering new agencies a limited time offer of FREE setup fees from August 15 to September 15, 2021 for Home Health Centre Ultra and Hospice Centre. What are you waiting for? Go ahead and schedule a demo with us now.

Reference:
Lisa, Hedges. “Quick Guide to Upfront, Recurring & Hidden Costs of EMRs.” Top Business Software Resources for Buyers - 2021 | Software Advice, 25 Feb. 2021, www.softwareadvice.com/resources/emr-pricing-explained/.