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Avoiding EMR meltdown: How to get your money's worth

About a third of practices that buy electronic medical records systems stop using them within a year. A little homework can help ensure you buy one that will work for you.

By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. Dec. 11, 2006.

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Barry D. Hendrix, MD, learned a very expensive lesson -- not all electronic medical records systems work for everybody.

Last year, the Paragould, Ark., family physician spent $100,000 -- more than he paid for his house in 1995 -- to buy an integrated practice-management and EMR system for his two-doctor practice. The practice-management component has a few problems, but it's usable. The EMR is a different story. Dr. Hendrix is completely dissatisfied with the performance and the vendor service. He stopped using the EMR after less than two weeks.

"I thought I was paying for a Ferrari, but what I got was a bag of parts," Dr. Hendrix said. "To see $100,000 just disappear. ... That's a tremendous amount of money to me. Had I been a new doctor coming out of a residency program or just out of medical school, I'd have gone bankrupt. The only thing that's kept me solvent is that I have been in town for years and have already established myself. But any new person wanting to start a practice and wanting to do it this way would be placing themselves in great jeopardy."

Dr. Hendrix is hardly alone in initiating what those in the technology business call a de-install -- stopping use of a software within six to 12 months after its installation.

There are no empirical data or surveys measuring how many de-installs occur annually, but people in the industry estimate that 20% to 33% of EMRs fail within a year of their implementation because physicians are unhappy with the systems. With industry estimates showing that up to 80% of practices have not yet made the EMR leap, there are a lot of first-time buyers who could fall into the de-installation trap.