Executives of organizations in the behavioral health and social service fields are faced with immediate and critical decisions about the purchase, implementation, and deployment of electronic medical record keeping (EMR) systems. The need to automate duplicative data recording processes is drive by increased competition and declining revenues. Concerns about HIPAA are also increasing interest in EMR as a compliance strategy. EMR systems offer many advantages to consumers and the professionals serving them ? real-time comprehensive patient data, reduction in duplicate testing and treatment errors, and decreased administrative burden for clinical professionals, among others. But, two critical questions remain:

• How much does purchasing an EMR system cost?
• What return-on-investment (ROI) can an organization expect to see from an investment in an EMR system ? and when will that return be realized?

Until recently, executives could easily answer the question about EMR system cost, but had no tools or framework to estimate ROI. Discussions of cost savings from EMR have been largely focused on the clinical reasons (which are quite compelling) for implementing an EMR system. To address this issue, the teams at Creative Socio-Medics (CSM) and OPEN MINDS mounted an initiative to assess the financial implications of EMR systems and to develop a modeling tool for estimating the financial return from EMR investments. As a result of the initiative, the CSM/OPEN MINDS team has developed an ROI modeling process for EMR system investments along with a multi-variate analytical tool. This white paper describes the current technology-related issues in the field, the use of ROI in assessing technology, and the specific factors and functions in the CSM/OPEN MINDS EMR return-on-investment analysis model.