Increasingly, collections of medical records are stored and shared digitally by multiple medical service providers. RAND research has explored the costs of implementing electronic medical record systems; the benefits accrued, including the improved quality of care; the rate of technology adoption; individual privacy concerns; and the role of government in the use and growth of electronic recordkeeping.
Commentary
Globally, the health IT industry should not wait to be forced by government regulators into doing a better job. Developers can boost the pace of adoption by creating more standardized systems that are easier to use, truly interoperable, and afford patients greater access to and control over their personal health data.
News Release
Despite wide investments nationally in electronic medical records and related tools, the cost-saving promise of health information technology has not been reached because the systems deployed are neither interconnected nor easy to use.
Journal Article
Despite wide investments nationally in electronic medical records and related tools, the cost-saving promise of health information technology has not been reached because the systems deployed are neither interconnected nor easy to use.
Journal Article
A fundamental tenet of preparedness for public health emergencies is the reliance on systems that rest on a bedrock of day-to-day use.
Journal Article
We developed a conceptual framework and protocol that combines evidence review with expert opinion to elicit clinically meaningful objectives for CDS directly from specialists.
Journal Article
National efforts to advance the health information agenda could profit from experience with computerized decision support in defense and business.
Journal Article
Productivity gains that can be achieved by widely adopting health information technology are likely to come from the reengineering of health care and may require new measurement tools to accurately gauge their impact.
Commentary
Across the country, electronic medical records, designed first and foremost to make health care delivery safer and more efficient, are proving valuable when disaster strikes, write Mahshid Abir and Art Kellermann.
Report
This report describes the development of 22 clinical decision support (CDS) artifacts as part of the Advancing Clinical Decision Support effort to accelerate the effective use of CDS interventions and facilitate evidence-based clinical practice.
Report
This report describes a protocol for eliciting high-priority targets for electronic clinical decision support for individual clinical specialties, a central requirement of the federal electronic health record incentive program.
Report
For nearly a decade, RAND researchers have studied how health information technology (HIT) stands to change health care.
Commentary
Providing physicians with cost data in real time automatically as a part of the electronic medical record could make them better purchasers for their patients and provide better value, writes Robert H. Brook.
Journal Article
In offices where e-prescribing was implemented, prescribers used information about formularies and drug benefits, but missing information reduced confidence in these resources and led to paper-based workarounds.
Journal Article
A panel of experts highlighted the complexity of issues surrounding development and implementation of a set of high-severity, clinically significant drug–drug interactions (DDIs) for use in electronic health records (EHRs).
Journal Article
With or without electronic charting options, nurses spend about 19% of their time completing documentation, compared with all other categories of care.
Project
A new online tool, called the "Unintended Consequences Guide," is available from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to help hospitals and other health care organizations anticipate, avoid, and address problems that can occur when adopting and using electronic health records.
Journal Article
Current federal standards for hospital "meaningful use" of health information technology--which requires electronic medication orders for 30 percent of eligible patients--are probably too low to reduce deaths from heart failure and heart attack among hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries.
Journal Article
The Guide to Reducing Unintended Consequences of Electronic Health Records is an online resource designed to help an organization anticipate, avoid, and address problems that can occur when implementing and using an electronic health record (EHR).
Commentary
From the standpoint of policy makers, the basic challenge is to ensure that liability concerns do not derail the clinical value of new CDS technology, write Michael Greenberg and M. Susan Ridgely.
Journal Article
Using a 12-year county-level panel, this study found that a 10 percent increase in births that occur in hospitals with electronic medical records reduces neonatal mortality by 16 deaths per 100,000 live births.
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