Though it seems much of the healthcare industry is finally on board with making the transition from paper to digital records, the transformation comes with a high price. Much anticipated, and sometimes hyped, electronic health record system rollouts cost millions and often end up causing chaos, frustration, even firings at hospitals across the country.

Case in point: Maine Medical Center, a 637-bed hospital and part of the MaineHealth network.

Maine Med’s go-live last December of its estimated $160 million Epic EHR system seemed to go off without a hitch. But four months later, the hospital network’s CIO, Barry Blumenfeld, MD, was out of a job, and, in an April 24 letter to employees, MMC President and CEO Richard W. Petersen announced a hiring freeze, a travel freeze and a delay in the further rollout of the EHR throughout MaineHealth. “This is being done to concentrate and focus our information systems resources to finding solutions to our revenue capture issues,” Petersen wrote.

The letter, obtained by Healthcare IT News, cited a $13.4 million operating loss the hospital sustained over six months. Petersen cited as contributing to the loss a decline in patient volumes, the increasing number of patients who can’t afford to pay for their care – and the launch of the EHR system.

“The launch of the shared electronic health record has had some unintended financial consequences,” Petersen wrote. “In some cases, we’ve been unable to accurately charge for the services we provide. This lack of charge capture is hurting our financial picture.”

A MMC nurse told Healthcare IT News the charge capture issue was a serious one.

“From what I’ve been told, for six weeks caesarean sections weren’t charged. Big things. Surgeries weren’t charged – big things and little things,” she said.

“Since Epic’s gone live, essentially, the Epic people failed to mention – and certainly 100 percent failed to teach – that the nurses and the doctors were supposed to be somehow charging people for everything that we do,” she added. “So I guess, early after go-live, finance people were saying, ‘Something’s wrong; we’re not charging.’”

Now the clinicians are supposed to be charging, the nurse said, but they haven’t been taught anything different. “We haven’t been brought back into a classroom and told this is how you’re supposed to be doing it,” she said.

Blumenfeld, MMC and Epic officials all declined comment when contacted by Healthcare IT News.

MMC is far from alone in experiencing EHR implementation woes. The 885-bed Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., reported similar difficulties this year.

“The health system has struggled with the implementation of Epic, a new electronic medical records system,” according to a May 17 article in the Winston-Salem Journal.

Sheila Sanders, Wake Forest’s CIO, officially resigned May 31; however, reportedly Sanders’ resignation was not related to the EHR rollout.