EHRs don?t pull down hospital costs

By DerrikKyle on May 3, 2010, 12:28 am

These days, everyone is talking about the financial benefits of electronic health records (EHR) these days. And CMS’s new proposed regs on ARRA incentive payments to hospitals and providers who adopt EHR technology assumes that quality of care and EHRs go together. A new Harvard study exposes some myths. A study released in November last year showed that EHR does not improve quality of care. But in an article published in the January 2010 issue of the American Journal of Medicine, another group of researchers have reached the conclusion that it does not save the money of hospitals either. While hospital computerization increased from the year 2003 to 2007, hospitals’ administrative costs increased slightly but steadily, from 24.4% in 2003 to 24.9% in 2007, the study found. “As currently implemented, hospital computing might modestly improve process measures of quality but does not reduce administrative or overall costs,” it concluded.The study also compared costs and quality of hospitals on the “100 Most Wired List” that is compiled by Hospital and Health Networks magazine. “Hospitals on the ‘Most Wired’ list performed no better than others on quality, costs, or administrative costs,” according to the study.The new study was lead by a team of researchers at the Harvard Medical School which was led by Dr David Himmelstein, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. The team analyzed whether hospitals that were more computerized had lower costs of care or administrative costs, so also whether they had better quality of care. The study found out that more computerized facilities often had higher total costs. And the ones that increased their computerization the fastest experienced more rapid administrative cost increases. As per the study healthcare IT news, hospitals’ administrative costs increased slightly but steadily from 24.4% in 2003 to 24.9% in 2007. The study concluded that hospital computing might just improve process measures of quality, but does not bring down administrative or overall costs.

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One Response to “EHRs don?t pull down hospital costs”

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