Application Paper #3

Application Paper #3

Coastal Medical has been honored with the prestigious Ambulatory HIMSS Davies Award for 2012 due to outstanding achievement in the implementation and obtaining value from EHRs and other health information technologies (Coastal Medical, 2012). Coastal Medical is a Rhode Island based predominantly primary care group that provides quality primary medical care services through their 19 offices, 91 physicians and 400 staff members. It implemented EHR system with the help of eClinicalWorks (electronic medical record vendor) in 2006 and early 2007 in order to improve quality of clinical services as well as create an effective process for the management of continuous quality improvement over time (HIMSS, 2012).

The implementation of EHR and EMR technologies helps Coastal to deliver high value and high quality medical care to its patients by making important changes in clinical practice of primary case. Along with this, it also achieves 308% return on initial investment due to EHR implementation in its health care system. Coastal achieves higher rate of return through cost savings, improvement in clinical satisfaction and screening/documentation of patients and raise in revenues. Total expenses of EHR were $5.8 million, while Coastal earned $17.8 million as revenue after the investment that shows excellent use of IT by the company in health care operations (HIMSS, 2012).

The increased payments and performance bonuses from multiple insurers also contributed significantly in higher returns. Additionally, Coastal also meets higher quality in its medical care by involving wide range of their clinics, staff, administrative personal, operational processes and top management in EHR implementation process that is similar to learning of the course. Along with this, it also achieves increased staff satisfaction and improvement in patient outcomes through making investments in staff’s training as well as hardware and software. At the same time, Coastal also...