Hospitals with advanced electronic medical record systems report achieving a broad range of benefits from their implementations, according to research by HIMSS Analytics and The Advisory Board. The study collected data from 33 chief information officers at Stage 6 or Stage 7 on the HIMSS seven-stage EMR Adoption Model.
Hospitals with advanced EMRs:
- Explicitly target specific clinical objectives. At least half the respondents targeted improvements in quality measures for venous thromboembolism, stroke, congestive heart failure, pneumonia, acute myocardial infarction and surgical patients. The vast majority also targeted their EMR implementations to reduce adverse drug events and other safety indicators.
- Report achieving a range of benefits. All responding hospitals indicated having realized and documented at least one core measure benefit and one safety measure benefit from EMR implementation. More than three-quarters (79 percent) reported multiple core measure and/or safety benefits. The most commonly reported benefits were adverse drug event reduction (73 percent); improvements in other patient safety indicators (58 percent); and improvements in VTE (55 percent) and CHF (48 percent).
Hospitals that target specific areas of benefit are more likely to report achieving those benefits. Over three-quarters of hospitals that targeted improvements in pediatric asthma, pregnancy, AMI, CHF and VTE reported achieving those improvements, compared with 0 to 17 percent of those that didn't target those conditions.
More than 77 percent of hospitals targeting adverse drug event reductions reported having achieved some reductions, as did two hospitals that did not target adverse drug events.
Hospitals also reported achieving other operational and administrative benefits, including: reduction in order turnaround time (76 percent); improved drug order to administration time (73 percent); decreased cost of paper forms (67 percent) and transcription (61 percent); reduction in duplicate lab testing (58 percent); improved reimbursement for inpatients or outpatients (42 percent); and reduced length of stay (18 percent).
For more information, go to www.himssanalytics.org.
