OE support for a new residency program-what would it cost for a turnkey setup and support?

Alabama Residency

Company to set up and provide ongoing support

New residency will need turnkey setup and ongoing form and other support

I’m looking for ballpark estimates and recommendations.
Typically, Residencies have 6 residents x 3 years plus about 6 medical staff teachers, plus 5-10x that number of other staff. So 6 FTE providers, 12 providers users to start, plus 100 staff.

The comparison I’m looking at is EPIC, which I gather would cost about $500k the first year, and 300k annually after that. (Or am I way off on that estimate?)

(Asking for a friend.)

Hello,
Hope you are doing well.

I can assist you with your requirement.

Please connect me through Skype via cis.garry or drop me a mail at garry@cisinlabs.com

Regards,
Garry

I’m not the one making the decision. If you want to email me with Ballpark estimates and recommendations, I’ll pass them on.
I think it would be useful to have an article in the WIKI about this subject.

1 Like

The issue with build out costs is that each case is unique, making even ballpark estimates difficult because of deployment-specific requirements, it’s tough to make a catch all wiki page for that.

For better results, consider also appending to the request the number of daily (or annual) encounters, the type of services provided (Outpatient, inpatient, ED, etc), billing/insurance policies (do you accept medicare/medicaid, 3rd party insurance, self-pay? Those types of things).

Other considerations include what custom forms will need to be developed to match your workflow and how many of those can be accomplished withe the built in LBF Editor versus advanced development. That question is not specifc to OpenEMR, new forms will likely have to be built regardless of the final EMR solution.

I have a ball park figure that you can work with. If you choose to take on OpenEMR and a full time developer that will bend to the program to your will and let’s say you paid the programmer for 30 hrs or labor per month at $95/hr. In a years time you will have paid the developer alone $34,200. Hosting OpenEMR anywhere would cost you under $500/yr. So, in the first year you can spend $34,700. Now you can add more hours per month for the developer and figure out your costs to design and develop OpenEMR to the dream system you want it to be.

Caution: use a developer from the Certified Support provider list.

Sherwin, your two responses hit it out of the ballpark! That’s great, thank you!!

Does your modified version meet the CEHRT yet, or is that moving along with the general program?

I think prospective users understand there’s a difference between a bespoke shirt from a Savile Row tailor and a shirt from Land’s End. They also should understand one could buy pants from Land’s End, and want to have them altered a bit to fit.

I’m reminded of British WWII generals telling their meteorologists they needed an accurate weather forecast a month ahead for the Normandy invasion. When the scientists told them it just wasn’t possible, the response was the generals still needed it.

Of course that’s what they wanted, but what they needed was a close range of dates that would supply the minimum necessary parameters, plus a 3 day prediction to call it off if there was a weather disaster coming.

in contrast, While EPIC is remarkably coy about what it actually costs to install, the Becker’s article describing what happens to big systems that install it is…illuminating.
" Covenant Health, a Tewksbury, Mass.-based health system, cited its $83 million Epic EHR implementation for a $60.9 million operating loss in 2018. The hospital reported a 30 percent decrease in productivity after the implementation, as well as physician turnover, which contributed to its financial issues."

The most expensive part of using an EMR is how much it slows down operations.

Sherwin, thanks again for a useful, to the point, helpful, actionable answer!!

1 Like

We don’t operate outside of the code base. What we build belongs to the client. We only share back what it allowed by the client. We keep nothing to ourselves. So to answer your question about the CEHRT that is moving along with the general program/code base.

In my experience, productivity recovers very quickly because when we implement the workflow that the providers want. They can produce work more rapidly because the system is to their design request.

I have a client that wanted the billing to be filled out when the provider was finished with the SOAP note. During the process of the provider filling out the SOAP note we provide a way for the provider to select the diagnoses and CPT codes. We also added that the system shows a list of codes used for that patient. When the providers saves the SOAP note the billing fee sheet is filled out in the background. No productivity lost and efficiency gained.