Positive study results for Health IT Advantages

Sat Mar 19, 2011 by drchronoblog

A comprehensive review of recent studies performed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has shown that 92% of articles concluded that HIT had overall positive effects on key aspects of care including quality and efficiency of care.

The current review found positive results in 96 of the articles (62 percent), and mixed but predominantly positive results in 46 other articles (30 percent). Ten articles were found to have negative or mixed-negative results.

Some examples of advantages of adopting EHR technology were listed in the article:

One study found that at three New York City dialysis centers, patient mortality decreased by as much as 48 percent while nurse staffing decreased by 25 percent in the three years following implementation of EHRs.
In an inpatient study, a clinical decision support tool designed to decrease unnecessary red blood cell transfusions reduced both transfusions and costs, with no increase in patient length-of-stay or mortality.
Another study addressing HIT in 41 Texas hospitals found that hospitals with more advanced HIT had fewer complications, lower mortality and lower costs than hospitals with less advanced HIT.

Another advantage highlighted was from a praciting family medicine physician in Alabama, who switched to EHR technology after unfortunately experiencing two hurricanes and a fire that destroyed her patient’s records. She no longer has to worry about that.