Doctors at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, California, say computerized physician order entry (CPOE), which is typically one of the first functionalities used in EHRs, has saved lives at their institution. It marks the first time evidence, which was published in the journal Pediatrics, has been presented that links EHRs with a decrease in mortality.
In eight years, the average mortality dropped from a little more than one death per 100 hospital discharges to approximately 0.7 when CPOE was introduced at the hospital. The CPOE application helped drive down unnecessary procedures such as blood transfusions. In addition to patient safety benefits, the reduction of these procedures also brings down the cost of care.
This is great news. Of course, there is a caveat. The hospital implemented other improvements at the same time CPOE was deployed. It's just difficult to prove one thing is directly responsible for one quality metric.
Will we ever be able to isolate or eliminate factors to prove whether an IT system or component impacted the quality of care? Perhaps at some point yes, but for now, we have to at least acknowledge that they do bring quantitative and qualitative benefits. Just how much credit we give them is debatable.
Interestingly, a health IT and policy expert expressed concern over Obama's push for health IT across healthcare organizations. His fear? Only experienced experts should roll out EHRs to ensure safe and properly implemented systems, but there is a dearth of experienced experts. We'll see if the regional extension centers and beacon communities can fill the gap, and later the graduates of the health IT programs at higher educational institutions.
Meanwhile, early adopters with mature EHR and EMR systems should try to tease out tangible benefits and see if we can't crack the cause and effect problem that plagues ROI studies on EHR and EMR implementations.
