Economic Outcomes of a Dental Electronic Patient Record

Abstract

The implementation of an electronic patient record (EPR) in many sectors of health care has been suggested to have positive relationships with both quality of care and improved pedagogy, although evaluation of actual results has been somewhat disillusioning. Evidence-based dentistry clearly suggests the need for tools and systems to improve care, and an EPR is a critical tool that has been widely proposed in recent years. In dental schools, EPR systems are increasingly being adopted, despite obstacles such as high costs, time constraints necessary for process worklow change, and overall project complexity. The increasing movement towards cost-effectiveness analyses in health and medicine suggests that the EPR should generally cover expenses, or produce total beneits greater than its combined costs, to ensure that resources are being utilized eficiently. To test the underlying economics of an EPR, we utilized a pre-post research design with a probability-based economic simulation model to analyze changes in performance and costs in one dental school. Our indings suggest that the economics are positive, but only when student fees are treated as an incremental revenue source. In addition, other performance indicators appeared to have signiicant changes, although most were not comprehensively measured pre-implementation, making it dificult to truly understand the performance differential-such pre-measurement of expected beneits is a key lesson learned. This article also provides recommendations for dental clinics and universities that are about to embark on this endeavor.

Electronic Health Records in Dental Education: A Scoping Review and Quantitative Analysis of Publications

“…There are barriers that challenges EHR implementation, as the lack of comfort with technologies and the lack of prepared professionals to provide training and support to users; system configuration and maintenance; reporting writing and costs [28,37]. Some cost analysis studies can be found in literature, but only a few addresses the full spectrum of diverse implementation costs, efficiency and costs of health care [77].…”

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

“…A review of the literature reveals a dearth of research into the costs of Health IT in medicine, “represent[ing] a major obstacle for decision makers who need reliable information to guide their decisions about EHR implementation.” 8 Information on costs for dental school Health IT is even more scant, 9 a fact that recently resulted in a call for submissions by the editor of this journal 10 . While some cost analysis studies can be found in the medical literature, only a couple address the full spectrum of diverse implementation costs, efficiency, and costs of health care 11 , 12 …”

Factors Influencing Implementation and Outcomes of a Dental Electronic Patient Record System

“…The implementation of an EPR requires a large capital expenditure and human resource effort that includes infrastructure, software, hardware, system configuration, documentation, user training and support, report writing, and maintenance of the new system 9 . Other secondary costs include retraining and reassignment of existing staff, ongoing hardware and software costs, compliance, and addition of support staff.…”