Let's pretend for the moment that you're a high-stakes gambler. You can't resist the adrenalin rush of laying down big chunks of cash for the chance for an equally large payback. Now, let's imagine you're in Vegas, at the most high-risk table in the casino; a $60,000 buy-in for the chance to win $44,000 on a single toss of a coin. The coin comes up heads and you win $44 large. Tails and you kiss your $60k goodbye.

Problem #1; the money you put at risk is considerably more than you can collect if you win. Problem #2; $60,000 is a lot of money to ride on a 50/50 bet. So, do you take the bet? Probably not. It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Yet this same scenario (minus the Las Vegas part) is exactly what many are considering in order to cash in on the government's $44,000 carrot to deploy and show "meaningful use" of an electronic health records system (EHR). The $60,000 is the low-end estimate of what the average EHR deployment will cost, with over $100,000 at the high end. To install an EHR and show meaningful use of it requires a considerable outlay of cash resources. If the payoff is only $44,000 then that's just a bad bet.

It would be easier and more efficient to skip the whole EHR deployment thing, and just dump the $60,000 in the trash. Why? Because there's a 50% chance that's where your EHR implementation dollars will end up. In the trash. On a coin toss.

By the way, that 50% is a conservative failure rate estimate. Other sources put the odds of a failed EHR deployment at 80%. Think about that for a moment; a 50% - 80% failure rate for deploying an EHR system. At best it's a coin toss. Wow!

When you compound a financial loss of that magnitude with the business impact on the average practice of all the ancillary problems and issues that ultimately leads to throwing in the towel on an EHR deployment (lost productivity, lost profitability, lost patients, etc.) this failed gamble has real business/practice life-threatening consequences. On a coin toss.

So how do you beat the House and increase your odds of winning? First, the payoff has to be more than $44,000. Deploying an EHR has to be a business decision with real business/patient benefits, not a means to collect $44,000 from Uncle Sam. It should be the right thing to do for the practice.

What else can you do? Watch our on-demand webinar. It's a fast-paced overview of the EHR deployment process that will equip you to make the right EHR choice for your practice. - Larry