A recent article in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making by
Ixchel Castellanos and colleagues looked at the financial implications of
introducing a Patient Data Management System. This study was a retrospective
observational and explorative analysis of cost and reimbursement data of a
hospital ICU in Germany for three years before and three years after the system
introduction. The authors believe that they are the first to present a ROI
calculation for a PDMS based on the actual costs and revenues of an ICU. They
note that they were surprised that there are few typical parameters, which may
be used to compare different institutions, and hope that their approach may
encourage institutions to publish comparable data. They found a considerable
increase of costs and reimbursement over six years, which was largely unaffected
by PDMS introduction and no net cost savings when comparing the considerable
investment costs with the potential effect on revenue.They surmise that the
introduction of a PDMS has probably minimal or no effect on reimbursement. They
conclude, "In our case the observed increase in profit was too small to
amortise the total investment for PDMS implementation. This may add some
counterweight to the literature, where expectations for tools such as the PDMS
can be quite unreasonable."
Reference
Castellanos I et al. (2013) Does introduction of a Patient Data Management
System (PDMS) improve the financial situation of an intensive care unit? BMC
Medical Informatics and Decision Making,13: 107. Available at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6947/13/107