Costs of health IT: beginning to understand the financial impact of a dental school EHR.
Health Information Technology (Health IT) constitutes an integral component of the operations of most academic dental institutions nowadays. However, the expenses associated with the acquisition and the ongoing maintenance of these complex systems have often been buried among costs for other electronic infrastructure systems, distributed across various cost centers including unmeasured central campus support, covered centrally and therefore difficult to quantify, and spread over years, denying school administrators a clear understanding of the resources that have been dedicated to Health IT. The aim of this study was to understand the financial impact of Health IT at four similar U.S. dental schools: two schools using a purchased Electronic Health Record (EHR), and two schools that developed their own EHR. For these schools, the costs of creating ($2.5 million) and sustaining ($174,000) custom EHR software were significantly higher than acquiring ($500,000) and sustaining ($121,000) purchased software. These results are based on historical data and should not be regarded as a gold standard for what a complete Health IT suite should cost. The presented data are intended to inform school administrators about the myriad of costs associated with Health IT and give them a point of reference when comparing costs or making estimates for implementation projects.
['Spallek|Heiko|H|', 'Johnson|Lynn|L|', 'Kerr|Joseph|J|', 'Rankin|David|D|']
D002017:Budgets D003199:Computer Systems D003200:Computer User Training D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis D003628:Database Management Systems D003740:Dental Clinics D003792:Dental Records D057286:Electronic Health Records D006801:Humans D008004:Licensure D008490:Medical Informatics D012575:Schools, Dental D012984:Software D012985:Software Design
Health IT information technology electronic health record dental education dental informatics dental school clinics electronic patient record information systems