HCFO Releases a New Findings Brief

Previous research trying to measure the effects of health information technology (HIT) on clinical outcomes have been limited to academic and integrated medical systems that may not be nationally representative. Stephen T. Parente, Ph.D., and Jeffrey McCullough, Ph.D., from the University of Minnesota addressed these limitations by merging Medicare claims data and a database documenting the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) at inpatient hospitals. They found a small but statistically significant, positive relationship between the use of EMRs and the avoidance of post-operative infections, but no significant relationships for two other types of HIT used at hospitals nor for two other measures of patient safety. These results and some potential limitations of the study underscore the need for further research including the development of additional measures of patient safety from claims data.


[back to top]