Below are some summary points I’ve pulled together which highlight the magnitude of the effort for which funding is sought.

• EHR is going to be the Y2K of the next 5 years.
• EHR is at the beginning of a national rollout
• Studies suggest that 200,000 healthcare IT professionals are needed for EHR. The total number it healthcare IT professionals today is 100,000
• It’s not known which EHRs qualify for incentives under ARRA
• Less than 8% of non-VA hospitals have EHR in even a single department (this does not mean these pass meaningful use test)
• Only 1.5% have them in all departments
• Studies state that 1/3 to 2/3’s of implementations fail
• Implementation by small practices has been almost non-existent
• One approach is for small and individual practices will need a full service “wrap around” solutions encompassing the following services
o Project management
o Selection
o Implementation
o Adapting workflows
o Training
o Support
• Major reasons for not doing EHR are
o Up-front costs
o Lack of IT skills
o Ongoing support costs
• Hospitals and large providers usually use their own IT departments for EHR, none of which has ever implemented EHR. Hence for the most important project undertaken by a provider, they elect to do it with people with no experience, relying on the vendor
• Where will the EHR vendors find the IT expertise and project management resources to staff a national roll out?

For those of you following EHR, here are two groups I just started which may hold some interest, Healthcare IT, HIT, EHR : Obtaining Stimulus Grant & Incentive $, and, HIT EHR Advice/Discussions for Hospitals & Physicians