EMR! What to do?

For the past three years, New Hope has attended numerous healthcare IT conferences, including the

Well over a decade ago, New Hope began developing its own database to store and aggregate data, while also serving numerous clinical/medical, human resources, and marketing functions. As meaningful use criteria began to develop, it became clear that we would need to take a different route. Though CMS does provide incentive pay for EMR adoption, many behavioral health settings such as ours were excluded from these incentives. Even though many efforts have been made to expand the reach of these incentives, we’re still waiting for our ticket in.

With 2014 racing at us like a runaway train, and the approval of stage 2 criteria, we’re feeling the pressure  to make a decision soon. Do we bite the bullet and purchase an EMR, or delve into an open source solution?

We’d really appreciate some peer feedback and recommendations on this matter. What solutions have you adopted for residential treatment settings?