Medical professionals express concern in implementing new EHR system in hospitals
As waves hospitals move from old methods of record keeping in new digital electronic health record (EHR), many medical professionals express concern that the implementation of an EHR system in their hospital will have disastrous consequences, including more mistakes and higher patient mortality.
But these fears are largely unfounded, researchers from Harvard Medical School and Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health found after studying a diverse group of US hospitals have implemented new systems DSE in 2011 and 2012.
better technology and monetary incentives from the federal government promoting the holding of more advanced cases meant that EHR adoption has accelerated, both in the US and abroad .
However, the implementation of a new EHR system can be one of the most disruptive events a hospital can experience. workflow disruptions can create many frustrations and distractions that providers learn new systems, which could lead to errors. Many suppliers fear that patient care could suffer accordingly.
A preliminary study on the implementation of the EHR of a hospital, even increased mortality in the months after the activation of the new system reported.
In the current study, led by Michael Barnett, assistant professor at the Harvard School Chan, researchers have sought to address this concern by studying the short-term impact of the implementation of EHR systems at national scale. They identified 17 hospitals have implemented a new EHR system in one day, known as the "go live." Then, using Medicare data from 2010 to 2012, they compared the results of patients before and after the implementation of the EHR to the same tendencies in other hospitals nearby.
Because these hospitals implemented their systems in a single day, this created a "natural experiment" to study effect of EHR implementation in similar groups of patients admitted before and after the activation of a new system.
researchers found that there was no difference in inpatient mortality, adverse events and readmissions security in the implementation of hospital EHR systems before and after commissioning, compared to the control group.
There was no change in the examination of the patient groups and hospitals that could be at greater risk of problems such as sick patients or hospitals that have made the transition from paper to electronic boards, compared to the passage of an electronic system to another.
"enormous frustration of physicians to move to new electronic health records can overflow into the fear that patient care is actually worse because these systems," said Barnett, who is also a doctor primary care at Brigham and Women's hospital. "Fortunately, our results suggest that the transition to a new system is a challenge that hospitals are prepared to handle safely."
This should encourage doctors, practices and hospitals to plan their own implementations, the researchers said.
"Having recently been witness firsthand how disruptive an implementation of the EHR may be, it is reassuring to know that the patient benefits prevent patients from being injured, "said Anupam Jena, lead author of the study and Ruth L. Newhouse associate professor of health care policy at HMS.
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