HIT Does Not Guarantee Better Care, Study Suggests
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
A recent study concluded EHR use does not produce coordinated care.
A study published by Medical Care concludes that, despite the fact that more than 70 percent of doctors use EHRs, almost half of them do not routinely receive necessary data to effectively coordinate patient care. Study authors suggest the implementation of health information technology does not in itself guarantee better patient care.
The study further found that, although a higher percentage of physicians using HIT received patient information necessary for care coordination than those who did not use HIT, more than one third did not routinely receive the needed patient information at all.
Researchers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality surveyed 4,500 office-based physicians and found only about one-third used an EHR system and shared patient health information electronically. Thirty-nine percent of respondents had an EHR system but did not share patient data electronically, and about 25 percent did neither. “The study findings highlight the continuing challenges to using HIT to coordinate care among providers,” lead researcher Chun-Ju Hsiao asserted in a statement.
The survey queried physicians regarding three specific types of information, and 64 percent reported routine receipt of the results of patient visits with healthcare providers outside their practice, 46 percent information on patients referred from other practices, and 54 percent hospital discharge information. “For all three types of information, roughly one-third of physicians reported receiving the information but not routinely,” Hsiao reported.
Transmission of the information, even when it was routinely received, remained by fax or other non-electronic means, rather than through EHRs or other interoperable electronic means. This was the case for three-fourths of doctors receiving information from other practices, and about half of those receiving hospital discharge information.
Although coordination of care between healthcare settings has been demonstrated to provide better-quality care at lower cost, past studies have uncovered lingering issues surrounding the exchange of patient information between primary care and specialist providers, and between doctors' offices and hospitals. Use of HIT might help to make the information needed to coordinate care more readily available.
“However,” according to Hsiao, “being able to exchange data electronically does not automatically associate with better care coordination if the information needed is not exchanged between providers.” Issues of cost and the interoperability of HIT systems have hindered the use of EHRs to share patient information.