Study highlights benefits of chiropractic EHR incentives for smaller practices

Small clinics benefited from EHR incentives

Small clinics benefited from EHR incentives

If you are preparing for the transition to chiropractic EHR, you probably have a few concerns about how this shift will affect your practice and the prospective timeline for a return on your investment. With meaningful use stage 2 approaching in 2014, medical professionals and legislators alike have been weighing in on the success of this program, and whether the documentation requirements the next phase entails may hinder the efforts of practices to adopt chiropractic EHR software. The question at hand seems to be: Is EHR implementation really worth it, and do fiscal incentives help?

According to the findings from a recent study, the answer appears to be a resounding yes, particularly for smaller practices. Researchers from University of California, San Francisco, reportedly monitored various primary care clinics between 2009 and 2010. All of the practices under observation employed 10 clinicians or fewer They sought to determine how incentivization affected the success of EHR implementation.

The participating offices all used the same EHR software and benefited from a comparable degree of technical support, the study abstract states. Over the course of a year, the researchers noted that overall patient care improved among incentivized clinics as indicated by rates of accurate prescription, blood pressure control and other variables.

"Among small EHR-enabled clinics, a [pay-for-performance] incentive program compared with usual care resulted in modest improvements in cardiovascular care processes and outcomes," the researchers concluded. 

While it is ultimately patient care that drives every medical clinic, financial incentives can serve as a more tangible reminder to follow through with various documentation requirements and other administrative aspects of chiropractic office management. In addition, investing in chiropractic EHR software that makes this process simpler and more intuitive can do a lot to improve overall care.

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