EHR Metrics

The ability to capture, quantify, and report on value added or return on investment for an EMR is an excellent way to help justify implementations and measure progress or compliance across an organization. It is ideal to have these metrics defined pre-implementation since some of the data collection activities needed to compare current vs. future state may not be available once the installation has taken place. There are hundreds of commonly gathered EMR metrics available and organizations can choose to develop and define custom metrics based on their unique style of practice or business.

Defining Methods to Capture/Quantify Value

Here are a couple of examples of some basic EHR metrics that can quantify some immediate value added of an EHR.

Metric #1 – Pharmacy Refills
This measure is intended to capture and quantify the amount of time per day spent performing pharmacy refill requests. This can then be expressed as a dollar amount based on the hourly cost of the employee. A comparison of this figure pre-EMR vs. post-EMR can yield a % savings in dollars per day. This number can then be extrapolated over the course of a week, month, quarter, or year.

Formula:
(((Refills p/day × Minutes p/refill) ÷ 60) × Cost of Staff Member p/hr) = Cost of performing refill requests p/day (in dollars)

Metric #2 – Chart Prep
This measure is intended to capture and quantify the amount of time per day spent prepping charts for patient visits. This can then be expressed as a dollar amount based on the hourly cost of the employee. A comparison of this figure pre-EMR vs. post-EMR can yield a % savings in dollars per day. This number can then be extrapolated over the course of a week, month, quarter, or year.

Formula:

(((Charts prepped p/day × Minutes p/chart) ÷ 60) × Cost of Staff Member p/hr) = Cost of prepping charts p/day (in dollars)