Technical Executive Summary in Support of 'Can Electronic Medical Record Systems Transform Healthcare.' and 'Promoting Health Information Technology'

摘要

This document summarizes the evidence and analysis that support two papers appearing in 'Health Affairs,' Vol. 24, No. 5, Sept/Oct 2005, by Hillestad et al. and by Taylor et al. Three much more complete technical reports are as follows: (1) Fonkych, K., and R. Taylor, 'The State and Pattern of Health Information Technology Adoption,' RAND Corporation, MG-409-HLTH, 2005; Girosi, F., R. Meili, and R. Scoville, 'Extrapolating Evidence of Health Information Technology Savings and Costs,' RAND Corporation, MG-410-HLTH, 2005; and Bigelow, J. H., K. Fonkych, C. Fung, and J. Wang, 'Analysis of Healthcare Interventions that Change Patient Trajectories,' RAND Corporation, MG-408-HLTH, 2005. The three sections of this paper summarize these documents in the order listed. Report no. 1 estimates the degree to which hospitals and physician practices have adopted electronic medical records (EMRs), and identifies factors that correlate with adoption. The primary source of data was the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS)-Dorenfest database for the beginning of 2004, which covers nearly 4,000 acute care community hospitals in the United States (75% of the total number) and most physician practices owned by hospital systems. Report no. 2 quantifies potential national-level efficiency savings that might be obtained with HIT and associated health care changes, and compares them to the costs the nation would incur to realize those savings (efficiency savings are those savings resulting from the ability to perform the same task with fewer resources). A patient trajectory is the sequence of events that involves the patient with the healthcare system. Report no. 3 examines four interventions in the healthcare system that affect patient trajectories, and how HIT may facilitate those interventions.