Health Information Technology Adoption and its Impact on Quality of Care, Efficiency, and Patient Flow

摘要

This study examines the relationship between health information technology (HIT) practices and patient care quality characteristics for acute care hospitals. More specifically, using a sample from Pennsylvania hospitals using econometric analyses we examine the impact that HIT functionalities such as electronic health record and health information exchange have on quality of care measures such as risk adjusted mortality and risk adjusted readmission rates; hospital efficiency measures such as cost per inpatient day and cost per inpatient admission, and on patient flow measure such as average length of stay. Our findings indicate a mixed bag. Implications of the study are discussed.