EMR success stories: Practices that are thriving after the changeover

Physicians who have seen an electronic medical records system pay for itself within a year share how they, and their systems, made it happen.

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff. May 5, 2008.

Like many physicians today, when James Morrow, MD, of North Fulton Family Medicine in Cumming, Ga., decided in 1998 to implement an electronic medical record, he heard the horror stories associated with EMR adoption.

But the four-physician practice, feeling financially drained by transcription costs running $9,000 per month, plunged ahead with a $200,000 investment. Ten years later, it has no regrets.

"People say we were early adopters, and I guess that's true," Dr. Morrow said. "But at the time we were just trying to survive."

The theme of survival is common among practices that decided the gamble of implementing an EMR was less frightening than continuing in their current situations.

Sometimes the gamble fails: Partners are resistant to using the system; employees aren't well-trained in it; the system itself fails to meet a practice's needs. This can result in a junked EMR and a lost investment.

But sometimes the gamble succeeds. Here, four physicians tell how they decided -- despite well-documented evidence of everything that could go wrong -- that an EMR was right for them, and how they succeeded in getting a return of their financial investment within the first year of operation.

Saving her practice
Solo family practice in Texas
8 months to recoup costs

In 2006, after five years in a shared family practice that serves mostly indigent, Medicaid and Medicare patients, Alicia V. Valdez, MD, of the South San Antonio Family Practice found herself facing life as a solo physician.