A recent study shows that the use of electronic health records can result in better quality of care. This is because, usually, when a patient moves out of a hospital into another rehabilitation facility or a nursing home, healthcare workers at the new facility do not have access to the prior medical records of these patients. The medical personnel lack information on their patient’s medication history and allergies which often means that the patient goes through the same tests multiple times. This electronic incompatibility incurs extra costs and wastes time.
The wide spread promotion of the use of electronic data in an interoperable manner, could improve patients’ overall health outcomes by making the decision-making process more efficient.
However, adoption of the electronic record system in the healthcare system has not seen smooth sailing so far. The U.S. government has invested over USD 30 billion in implementing and incorporating the electronic health record system into the healthcare industry.
In fact, in 2011, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid launched the “Meaningful Use” program which is presently called the “Promoting Interoperability Program. It offers monetary incentives to health care providers who use the electronic record system in a way that encourages public health reporting and information sharing.
Researchers at the University of Missouri merged large datasets from the electronic health records, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid as well as the American Hospitals Association. The study spanned 300 hospitals in the U.S. and included over 5 million patients and explored the effect electronic health records have on patient mortality rates. Results were found by dividing performance into 3 different categories; first were the hospitals that fully implemented the “Meaningful Use” Program, the second category included hospitals that made use of the electronic record system but did not meet the standard set by the program and the last category was for hospitals that either had no system for electronic data keeping or partially implemented the system.
It was found that the hospitals that followed the guidelines set under the “Meaningful Use” Program were able to reduce patient mortality rates more than the two other hospital categories. In addition to this, hospitals that followed the “Meaningful Use” Program were able to dispel better quality of care as well.
Researchers hope that in the future electronic data combined with the use of data analytics be used to identify patient characteristics that put them at greater risk for infections or other afflictions. Rural hospitals can also particularly benefit from this research who compared to their urban counterparts have always been scarce on resources. Rural hospitals particularly took a hit during the Covid-19 pandemic as seen by the worse patient health outcomes there.
According to the lead author of the study, Kate Trout, “Electronic health records equipt us with the information based off which we can set up alerts after surgery so that we can follow up on critical times. This initiative will help us identify patient populations that need our help most and rather than putting them through redundant medical procedures we can provide them extra care.”
