Fergie's Tech Blog

Study: Electronic Health Records Don't Improve Care

Julie Steenhuysen writes for Reuters AlertNet:

Electronic health records -- touted by policymakers as a way to improve the quality of health care -- failed to boost care delivered in routine doctor visits, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

Of 17 measures of quality assessed, electronic health records made no difference in 14 measures, according to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study by researchers at Stanford and Harvard Universities was based on a survey of 1.8 billion physician visits in 2003 and 2004. Electronic health records were used in 18 percent of them.

In two areas, better quality was associated with electronic records, while worse quality was found in one area, they said.

posted by Fergie @ 7/09/2007 05:07:00 PM