As the primary driver of cost, physicians expect to see patient encounters decline in the year of adoption by an average of 10%.  However, following adoption physician practices will also directly benefit from EHR-based workflow improvements that enable them to see more patients. 

“The most important factor in reducing the cost of EHR implementation is accelerating through the workflow changes,” said Bob Rossi, vice president of CDW Healthcare. “The quicker practices can reach full adoption, the quicker they will reach the positive side of the cost curve.”

For the study, CDW surveyed 200 physician practices that have not yet adopted an EHR throughout the United States, completed secondary research on physician practice workflow and used CDW Healthcare’s internal data on EHR solutions. Overall, physician practices are focused on the costs associated with EHR adoption, citing their primary concerns as hardware/software costs (66%), time associated with staff training (52%) and workflow readjustment (43%).  Although physicians’ top concern is hardware and software, the CDW Healthcare study found that year one expenses associated with that category of cost will likely make up just 12% of total EHR adoption costs.

In contrast, CDW Healthcare found that lost revenue will be a far larger drain on physician practices than hardware and software costs. Physician practices said they expect patient encounters to fall by an average of 10% in the first year, equating to a total average revenue loss of more than $100,000 per physician.  Although 10% is the survey average, nearly 40% of respondents said they expect patient encounters to fall by 25% or more in the first year, representing the possibility of greater potential revenue loss.