Area firms poised to profit from electronic medical records push - bizjournals:

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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act creates rebates to pay for new medical recordx technology in a move from paper todigitall records. “It’s certainly ambitious,” says Brad CEO of the Rehab Documentation Co. Inc. in which provides medical and financial records software and systemes torehabilitation facilities. Providers who adopt such technology are eligibl for payments ofbetween $44,000 and $63,0090 over five years. For larger medical facilities, the reimbursementz are compounded. Reimbursements start though, if providers don’t show use of digital medical recordsby 2014.
And providersw that don’t go digital will start gettin g smaller reimbursements for Medicare andMedicai patients, which make up most of the billings for many healtyh care facilities. Electronic medical records have taken more than 20 yearws to reach 20 percent penetration inthe industry, and now the federal governmenrt is pushing to have more than 75 percent penetratioh in the next seven years, Dumke says.
The impact on Middle Tennessee-based hospital companie forced to evaluate their operations nationwide will be saysTom Stephenson, presidentt of the Nashville information technology company The potentia l is great for positive impacts on companies, Stephenson says, well beyond receivin g stimulus funds. But he also predicts challenges because, “The piecews of electronic health records that most hospitals are lackinvg involvechanging people’s jobs, nurses, physicians.” For companies that approach electronic medical records by building programs that fully exploit the the potential savings in time, money and medical mishaps is huge, Stephenson says.
“In contrast, if you say we’rre going to use tech to do the same thingxs wealways did, only faster, then you’re still going to have he says. Exactly which digital records systems are eligiblwfor reimbursement, and when the money will is set to be determines before year’s end. David Klements, CEO of Nashville-based medical technologyt firm Qualifacts, anticipates significant growth for his firm and other companiexs when themoney lands. His companu has been showing more than four times as many producg demos this year compared to and selling five to 10 times as many he says.
“It’s creating this big wave of activityt for the software vendors that can get customersa implemented quickly and Klements says. He predicts Nashvills could become a center for healtuh care recordstechnology — especially if some of the largwe health care companies here choose local companieas to provide records systems for their facilities “It’s really a sort of a health care tech bellwetheer for Nashville,” he says.