Eric Whitney
Hospitals Not Bilking Medicare Using Electronic Medical Records
A new study says there's no need to worry about hospitals using their new electronic medical records to generate bigger bills and boost their income. It's been a concern since at least 2012, when the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services sent hospitals a strongly worded letter warning them against using electronic records inappropriately.
The letter followed reporting by the Center for Public Integrity and the New York Times that found hospitals that used electronic records were billing Medicare for significantly more than hospitals still using paper records.
Computers, the theory goes, make it easier to charge for more procedures or more expensive procedures than a paper record would. Dr Ashish Jha, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Julia Adler-Milstein at the University of Michigan designed a study to compare billing records from 393 hospitals with electronic records to 782 hospitals still using paper records.
“To my surprise, we found nothing,” says Jha. “We found that electronic health records didn't really change billing practices at all.” He concludes the study with advice for policymakers: “This worry about excessive billing, the empirical evidence says this should not be a big focus of attention.”
Rural Hospitals Weigh Independence Against Need For Computer Help
One of the biggest challenges American hospitals face right now is moving to electronic medical records from old-fashioned paper files.
The switch is costing tens of billions of dollars, eating up tons of staff time, and it's especially tough for the country's 2,000 rural and small-town hospitals. Rural hospitals are typically short on cash and people with information technology skills. So a lot of small hospitals are turning to bigger hospitals for help, and giving up some independence in exchange.
The 10-bed Beartooth Billings Clinic in Red Lodge (MO), a historic mining town just outside Yellowstone National Park and 60 miles west of Billing is one hospital that did. Sharing electronic records sounds simple. But for a lot of little hospitals doing that while meeting new federal digital standards means coming up with $1 million or more up front.
That's a tall order, when the average rural hospital runs at a financial loss of 8 percent a year. So the Red Lodge hospital became part of the bigger Billings Clinic system, in part to get help with IT.