RAND Research Topic: Electronic Medical Records

Online Guide Helps Health Organizations Adopt Electronic Health Records

Dec 14, 2011

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.

Seeking Ways to Improve Electronic Prescribing Safety and Efficiency

Jun 1, 2005

RAND Health is researching electronic prescribing as a way to deliver accurate information to the point of care, improving prescribing safety and accuracy.

Sharing of Health-Care Data Needs a Tuneup

Jun 26, 2003

commentaries by RAND Staff: insightful commentaries on current events, published in newspapers, magazines and journals worldwide.

Creating Health ID Numbers Could Improve Patient Privacy

Oct 30, 2008

As it considers ways to improve the efficiency and quality of U.S. health care, one issue that a new Congress should reconsider is the longstanding roadblock that has stalled efforts to create a system of unique patient identification numbers for every person in the United States, writes Richard Hillestad.

Clinical Decision Support and Malpractice Risk

Jul 6, 2011

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.

Do Physicians Need a 'Shopping Cart' for Health Care Services?

Feb 22, 2012

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.

Medical Records Immune to Tornado in Joplin, Mo.

May 23, 2012

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.

The Delayed Promise of Health-Care IT

Feb 26, 2013

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.

Methods Commonly Used to Create `Report Cards' May Overestimate the Quality of Health Care

Feb 23, 2006

RAND news release: Methods Commonly Used to Create `Report Cards' May Overestimate the Quality of Health Care

RAND Study Says Health Information Technology Can Improve Quality and Efficiency; More Evidence Needed About How to Put the Technology Into Wider Use

Apr 11, 2006

April 11, 2006 News Release: RAND Study Says Health Information Technology Can Improve Quality and Efficiency; More Evidence Needed About How to Put the Technology Into Wider Use.

Creating Unique Health ID Numbers Would Facilitate Improved Health Care Quality and Efficiency

Oct 20, 2008

Creating a unique patient identification number for every person in the United States would facilitate a reduction in medical errors, simplify the use of electronic medical records, increase overall efficiency and help protect patient privacy.

Pay-For-Performance for Medical Groups Stimulates Changes in Practice

Mar 11, 2009

A large group of California physicians given financial incentives to improve the quality of medical care have begun to embrace an array of changes important to advancing quality.

Electronic Health Records Linked to Improved Quality in Primary Care Practices

Oct 5, 2009

Routine use of electronic health records may improve the quality of care provided in community-based primary care practices more than other common strategies intended to raise the quality of medical care.

Electronic Medical Records Not Always Linked to Better Care in Hospitals

Dec 23, 2010

Use of electronic health records by hospitals across the United States has had only a limited effect on improving the quality of medical care.

More Changes in Health Care Needed to Fulfill Promise of Health Information Technology

Jan 7, 2013

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.

Focus on Health Information Technology

Mar 30, 2012

For nearly a decade, RAND researchers have studied how health information technology (HIT) stands to change health care.

Some Significance Tests for the Median Which Are Valid Under Very General Conditions

Mar 1, 1949

Order statistics are used to derive significance tests for the population median which are valid under very general conditions. These tests are approximately as powerful as the student t-test for small samples from a normal population. Also the application of a test requires very little computation. Thus the tests derived compare very favorably with the t-test for small sets of observations.

Implementing a Low-Cost Computer-Based Patient Record: A Controlled Vocabulary Reduces Database Design Complexity

Jan 1, 1995

In order to build a computer-based patient record (CPR) system suitable for use in solo and small group practice settings it is necessary to use development methods that minimize cost.

A Document Processing Architecture for Electronic Medical Records

Jan 1, 1995

The authors suggest that development of a viable electronic medical record system can be achieved by adopting an underlying information architecture based on document type rather than on data.

The Role of Computer Use in Different Medical Specialties

Jan 1, 2001

Health-related Web sites are among the most visited sites on the Internet, and their use may change the patient-provider relationship. This column addresses the effect of computers on obtaining clinical data and treatment information among physicians in different specialties using data from the Community Tracking Study physician survey, which surveyed active physicians in the United States between August 1996 and August 1997.