Ken,
My two cents worth is this. In going to an EHR, we have entered a brave new world where our entire livelihood and professional life now hangs by the slimmest of electronic threads. Being frugal is nice, and I have purchased several pieces of medical equipment on e-Bay for example. But I don't think that the electronic environment is a place to scrimp. I find the thought of data loss or even being unable to practice for a week because of some IT disaster so horrible that I put its care and feeding way at the front of the line. You can eat spaghetti for a month, take public transportation, turn the air conditioner up to 85, whatever; we all did that in school and as residents. But scrimping on IT support, backups, backups to backups, power supplies, etc. for me is right in there with taking off in a light aircraft with the engine running a little rough. The consequences are just too awful.
