The study was conducted by the Health Information Technology Evaluation Collaborative — a multi-institutional effort directed by Rainu Kaushal, MD, and Lisa Kern, MD, and funded by the state of New York, in order to evaluate and assess the impact of New York’s health information technology strategy.
According to the release, in 2008, researchers collected data about the quality of patient care across nine measures from nearly 500 physicians and 75,000 patients in ambulatory practices in the Hudson Valley region of New York. Data was gathered from five different health plans, including two national commercial plans, two regional commercial plans and one regional Medicaid health maintenance organization.
The researchers found that 56 percent of physicians who used commercially available EHRs provided significantly better quality of care than physicians using paper records for four measures, including A1c testing in diabetes, breast cancer screening, Chlamydia screening and colorectal cancer screening. The combined score across all nine measures indicated that EHRs led to better patient care than paper records.
According to the release, the researchers intend to follow up on the study to determine how the effects of EHRs on patient care vary over time and across different locations, to examine the effects of EHRs on the cost of patient care and to work on improving ways to measure the quality of patient care.
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