Measuring the Effects of Health Information Technology on Quality of Care: A Novel Set of Proposed Metrics for Electronic Quality Reporting

摘要

We created a novel metric set that could be used to measure the potential quality effects expected from electronic integration of physician practices, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, and other sources of clinical data. The metric set is potentially suitable for electronic reporting and contains 18 metrics previously developed by national organizations and 14 newly developed. This metric set may have broad utility, given that EHRs with health information exchange are being disseminated widely. This work also has the potential to stimulate discussion about how to improve the way data are entered and extracted from clinically rich electronic data sources, with the ultimate goal of more accurately measuring and improving the quality of ambulatory care today.