Putting a Price Tag on Failure

Implementing an EMR, whether in the hospital or in physician’s offices, is tricky business. Although there are predictable pitfalls we seem to always find new ways (or combination of ways) to stall or fail altogether. I was wondering if we have been including the cost of failure in our calculations of the predicted cost of an average implementation. If one considers the concept of “meaningful use” what percentage of our “successful” implementations fall short of “meaningful success” and what is the cost of meeting all new requirements? My gut tells me we are being low-balled, but I have to confess that statistics was never my forte. Any thoughts?