The Challenge of Analyzing EHR Data; Can This Problem Be Solved?

A recent comprehensive and insightful article in theHarvard Business Review succinctly summarized the essence of the problem facing hospitals and their EHRs in the introduction (see: The IT Transformation Health Care Needs). I copy it below:A central reason the negatives [of EHRs] seem to outweigh the positives is the way IT systems are being used.To date, the priorities of most health care organizations have been replacing paper records with electronic ones and improving billing to maximize reimbursements. Although revenues have risen as a result, the impact of IT on reducing the costs and improving the quality of clinical care has been modest, limited to facilitating activities such as order entry to help patients get tests and medications quickly and accurately. Relatively few organizations have taken the important next step of analyzing the wealth of data in their IT systems to understand the effectiveness of the care they deliver. Put differently, many health care organizations use IT as a tool to monitor current processes and protocols; what only a small number have done is leverage those same IT systems to see if those processes and protocols can be improved —and if so, to act accordingly. This is a significant reason that productivity growth in health care has been anemic and weaker than that in many other industries.Also included in the introduction of the article was an example of what one large health system, Intermountain Healthcare, accomplished in ...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Cost of Healthcare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Business Healthcare Information Technology Hospital Executive Management Hospital Financial Medical Research Quality of Care Source Type: blogs