How To Avoid The Top 3 EHR Contracting Pitfalls

Jeffery Daigrepont | FiercePracticeManagement | August 23, 2011

It seems inevitable that every practice will eventually be on an electronic health record (EHR) system. Making the right vendor decision and avoiding pitfalls is critical to having a successful experience. Below are the hard lessons learned by those who have been there, done that, and paid the price. These are true stories of clients that engaged the Coker Group after their purchases. For confidentiality, names of vendors or practices are not disclosed.

Hard lesson #1: Suprise costs for software upgrades
A small practice in Ohio bought a new system, and everything seemed to be going well. Eight months after the purchase, however, the vendor sent the practice an unexpected invoice for $5,000. Stunned, the practice demanded an explanation. The vendor replied with a letter stating the version purchased by the practice will not comply with ICD-10; therefore, the practice needed to upgrade and purchase the newer version. To make matters worse, the existing operating system on the server was not adequate to support the new version. To meet the requirements, the practice faced more than $10,000 in unexpected fees.