“Meaningful Use” of ambulatory EMR: Does it improve the quality and efficiency of health care?

The effectiveness of electronic health record promotion for healthcare providers in the United States since the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act: An empirical investigation

The US Government has embarked on the largest initiative to date to encourage widespread use of electronic health records (EHRs). Up to now, it is not yet clear that what the actual effectiveness of EHR promotion is like since the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. As a response, this study analyzes the EHR conversion at the primary stage (sign-up EHR→go-live EHR) and the advanced stage (go-live EHR→meaningful use of EHR) for different types of healthcare providers in the United States. With the data from the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology-Regional Extension Centers Program, this study finds that healthcare providers have achieved progress in the EHR conversion at both the primary and advanced stage. However, the levels of progress made at different stages of EHR conversion vary for different providers. For rural and underserved healthcare settings, the progress made at the advanced stage is smaller than that at the primary stage, contrary to the case for other kinds of providers. Moreover, although the greater progress has been made at the advanced stage for some kinds of providers, the overall level of EHR conversion for various healthcare providers is far greater at the primary stage than at the advanced stage.

The impact mechanism of the controlling system in hospitals on quality of care: A study on clinical practice in China

BACKGROUND

Quality control system is one of the hospital information systems. The adoption of quality control system increases the work efficiency; however, to some extent, it also increases the workload for physicians.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of the quality control system on quality of care (e.g., process and outcome performance).

METHODS

Our study collected physicians' behavior information from a large urban hospital in China. We constructed the fixed-effect model to examine the relationship between the quality control system adoption and quality of care.

RESULTS

Using the quality control system has a significant (p< 0.001) and negative effect on patients' stay length in the hospital (process performance). Furthermore, using the quality control system has a significant (p< 0.001) and positive effect on the trends of cure rate in the hospital (outcome performance). The coefficient of the dependent variable from the patients' stay length (process performance) is lower than the trends of cure rate (outcome performance).

CONCLUSIONS

The controlling system can improve medical quality even though it limits physician behavior to some extent. The controlling system improves both the process performance and outcome performance, and it brings more benefits to outcome performance rather than process performance which means the reflection of the new technology may have more evident on outcome variables.

Physicians' perception and attitude toward electronic medical record

Implementation of an electronic medical record (EMR) system increases efficiency of health services, quality of care and patient satisfaction. Successful implementation of EMRs depends on many factors. The path to quality improvement and financial gain with EMRs lies in getting the greatest number of Physicians to use the system. The main objective of this research is to explore physicians, attitude and perceptions of importance EMRs function, anticipated utilization of EMR functions and also issue impact EMRs. The cross-sectional study was conducted on 133 specialist physicians of three teaching hospitals of Hormozgan Medical Sciences University. The most important finding in this study was the Entry/Display of Diagnoses and Medications (96.3%) and Prescription Alerts drug-drug, allergy and dose checking and formulary management (96.2%) were of greatest importance to respondents. Nuclear medicine, Time trended Clinical Data Display, decision support capabilities, and medical management reporting generated percentage suggesting less than weekly usage. Only a small number of respondents addressed physicians' resistance in compare to another issues impact on EMRs. Understanding physician perceptions and attitude will allow for the development of targeted education to demonstrate the advantages and implementation of EMRs in further and improve physician perceptions of EMRs.