Costs of Health IT: Beginning to Understand the Financial Impact of a Dental School EHR

Abstract

Health Information Technology (Health IT) constitutes an integral component of the operations of most academic dental institutions nowadays. However, the expenses associated with the acquisition and the ongoing maintenance of these complex systems have often been buried among costs for other electronic infrastructure systems, distributed across various cost centers including unmeasured central campus support, covered centrally and therefore dificult to quantify, and spread over years, denying school administrators a clear understanding of the resources that have been dedicated to Health IT. The aim of this study was to understand the inancial impact of Health IT at four similar U.S. dental schools: two schools using a purchased Electronic Health Record (EHR), and two schools that developed their own EHR. For these schools, the costs of creating ($2.5 million) and sustaining ($174,000) custom EHR software were signiicantly higher than acquiring ($500,000) and sustaining ($121,000) purchased software. These results are based on historical data and should not be regarded as a gold standard for what a complete Health IT suite should cost. The presented data are intended to inform school administrators about the myriad of costs associated with Health IT and give them a point of reference when comparing costs or making estimates for implementation projects.

Planning the Future Oral Health Workforce: A Rapid Review of Supply, Demand and Need Models, Data Sources and Skill Mix Considerations

“…EHRs provide a viable, cost efficient and timely alternative to understand dental service utilisation data, against surveys that are more time consuming and resource intensive [ 53 , 54 ]. However, the use of EHRs is still in its infancy in terms of data quality and consistency in systems across public and private sectors [ 55 , 56 , 57 ]. As a large proportion of dentists practice in the private sector [ 7 ], it becomes important to find avenues to improve consistency as well as building data repositories for research and planning purposes.…”

Planning the Future Oral Health Workforce: A Rapid Review of Supply, Demand and Need Models, Data Sources and Skill Mix Considerations

“…EHRs provide a viable, cost efficient and timely alternative to understand dental service utilisation data, against surveys that are more time consuming and resource intensive [53,54]. However, the use of EHRs is still in its infancy in terms of data quality and consistency in systems across public and private sectors [55][56][57]. As a large proportion of dentists practice in the private sector [7], it becomes important to find avenues to improve consistency as well as building data repositories for research and planning purposes.…”

Cost Comparison of an On‐Premise IT Solution with a Cloud‐Based Solution for Electronic Health Records in a Dental School Clinic

“…Portability is vastly enhanced, as cloud systems enable easier movement of applications and data from one environment to another. These advantages are significant, and a cloud‐computing framework can make patients' EHR sharing easier and allow health professionals to communicate better, as well as help lessen issues associated with on‐premise systems such as network security and data storage 3, 4 . While there exist numerous and varied considerations in moving from traditional on‐premise client‐server EHRs to cloud‐based EHRs, we found no research comparing them in a dental school environment.…”

“…In the U.S. alone, most dental schools have at least a traditional on‐premise EHR 5, 6 . EHRs are said to be vital for patient safety and the maintenance of standards as they provide information for patient care, ensure fiscal accountability, track quality of patient care, manage clinic operations, and report student work 4 . The adoption of EHRs in U.S. dental schools has been high, as opportunities to enhance clinical training, promote evidence‐based practice, streamline billing and collections, and conduct research have interested academic dental institutions 7 …”

“…Nevertheless, no research exists on the costs and benefits of using a cloud‐based system in dental school. Most dental schools do not track costs associated with the investment that has been made in their current health information technology (IT) infrastructure, let alone estimate the cost of future improvements 4 . Without a cost‐benefit comparison, the case for cloud‐computing systems is diminished and, with that, all the tremendous benefits that such a solution brings.…”