The popularity of EHRs — or Electronic Health Records — is rising quickly in the digital age. More healthcare organizations than ever before are looking to implement EHR for cost-savings and improvements in efficiency of care. Yet some are concerned about the money needed for EHR costs. They question whether the initial investment is enough to offset the potential cost savings. The answer is absolutely, if you make sure to budget and forecast properly. Here’s how your hospital or healthcare facility can budget and prepare for anticipated EHR costs.
Does your facility have questions about how to budget for EHR costs, staff planning, or other expenditures? Since 1998, Questica has worked to make handling finances easier and better for hospitals and other healthcare organizations. We manage over $63 billion in annual public sector and non-profit budgets, and we want to help you. Please visit our website for more information and consider signing up for one of our free webinars.
How to properly prepare for EHR costs
EHR implementation cost breakdown
So how much does it cost to implement EHR in the first place? Unfortunately, the answer to that is not so easy. The initial EHR costs depend on the size of your organization, the features you want or need, how large the installation is, and more. That may seem daunting, but there are many resources online that allow you to compare options and make the best decision for your facility. If you’re going to budget for EHR, understanding these varying factors is necessary. Keep in mind to also factor in the overall cost, not just the initial installation. What’s the cost of regular maintenance, for example, and how often should the system be updated and maintained?
Create a comprehensive budget
Making a budget for EHR will be different than making a budget for your facility’s everyday costs. At the very least, an EHR budget should factor in the following: hardware, EHR software, assistance, training, and any other contingencies.. One helpful way to compile and track a budget is to use dedicated financial planning software. Financial planning software offers better utility and assistance for budgeting and forecasting. Put simply, the right financial planning software allows you and your organization to do more tasks, more efficiently and effecively.
Questica software is technology that help you plan for EHR costs
Questica Budget software is a helpful financial solution for implementing EHR. With Questica Budget, you can easily organize the EHR costs and the variables affecting your facility. You can also utilize our cloud functionality to get the budget out faster to everyone who needs it. In addition to that, Questica offers a resource called Questica Help. This resource tool currently houses over 900 searchable videos, articles, job aids, quick reference guides, and FAQs that cover a wide variety of other topics such as analytics and reporting, dashboards, budget tools, allocations, preparing next year’s budget, transparency tools like our OpenBook, plus user settings, administration, and much more. No need to lengthy, confusing teaching seminars. Your staff will be awestruck by how quickly they learn our software.
To learn more about Questica and how our software can help you, read a success story or take a product tour.
