Emergency rooms fully equipped with EHRs have been credited with treating patients who eventually have shorter hospital stays than hospitals that have paper or basic EHRs, according to a new study.
The study, conducted by Michael Furukawa, an assistant professor at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, looked at data from the 2006 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.
The data revealed that hospitals with EHR systems treated patients 13.1 percent more quickly and spent 22.4 percent less time on these patients than at other hospitals. The other major nugget from the data was that hospitals with basic EHRs were less efficient than other hospitals. The wait time for these hospitals' emergency rooms was 47.3 percent longer for patients with either an urgent or semi-urgent issue.
So what can be gleaned from this new study? First, that EHRs and EMRs need to be fully optimized to truly reap any efficiencies. As Furukawa pointed out, get past the learning curve is also critical. I believe other studies have shown a drop in productivity when EMRs and EHRs were first implemented, which can be expected for any new technological adoption and workflow change. Healthcare providers need to plan for those changes and glitches so that learning curve is short and patient safety is not compromised. So you need both a fully functional system and users who should have gone through solid training on the systems.
The study had its limitations in that the data analyzed was just one year's worth, and the most important data point is measuring the improvement from year to year. There are other factors that weren't considered, but this study is a good starting point to look at EHR and EMR benefits.
This study should also be the first of many that will be able to tie efficiencies and improved clinical outcomes to the adoption of health IT. Expect to see a rise in better delivery of healthcare services as user proficiency of EHRs rises, vendors align their next-generation product functionalities with the meaningful use criteria such as tracking population health and exchanging data, and as legislation passes that includes all aspects of health, including behavioral health.
Photo by kevindooley courtesy of Creative Commons license.
