The Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records and Health Care Quality

Abstract

The federal government is investing approximately $30 billion in incentives for adoption and meaningful use (MU) of electronic health records (EHRs). Whether achieving MU improves quality of care is unclear. The researchers conducted a longitudinal study of 514 primary care physicians in New York State from 2010 to 2011. Quality of care provided by those who achieved stage 1 MU was compared with the quality provided by those who used EHRs but did not achieve stage 1 MU. Generalized estimating equations were used to determine whether receipt of MU incentives was independently associated with performance on 9 MU quality measures. In 2011, 44% of physicians achieved MU and 56% did not. No difference in quality was found between those who achieved stage 1 MU and those who were using EHRs but had not achieved MU. Longer follow-up is needed to observe the full effects of this multistage national policy.

New Integrated Model Approach to Understand the Factors That Drive Electronic Health Record Portal Adoption: Cross-Sectional National Survey

“…EHRs may include a range of data such as medical history, medication and allergies, immunization status, laboratory test results, radiology images, vital signs, personal statistics like age and weight, and billing information [4]. EHR portals have received great attention at the governmental level worldwide [2,3,5]. In the United States, the support given to EHRs, via a meaningful use program, led the federal government to commit unparalleled resources to support the adoption of EHRs through incentive payments that can reach up to US $27 billion over 10 years [5,6].…”

“…EHR portals have received great attention at the governmental level worldwide [2,3,5]. In the United States, the support given to EHRs, via a meaningful use program, led the federal government to commit unparalleled resources to support the adoption of EHRs through incentive payments that can reach up to US $27 billion over 10 years [5,6]. EHR portals are a relevant topic not only in the United States but also in Europe through several projects such as the European Patients Smart Open Services (EpSOS) initiative promoted by the European Union Commission [3].…”

Empirical advances with text mining of electronic health records

“…These new semantic technologies could improve the residents’ follow-up over time and their health paths and could offer well-adjusted solutions to their multiple health problems. As with incentive programmes of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the United States [ 48 ], it should be possible to answer questions about the meaningful use of EHR and quality of health care in the near future.…”

“…As explained in [ 52 ], future work on CN data should optimize the use of key functions to improve health providers’ time efficiency, as well as data quality, integrity and usefulness [ 48 , 53 ]. The next step will then be to fully integrate the CN data, with the problem list being the main tool defining health key functions.…”

Using Electronic Health Records To Generate Phenotypes For Research

“…Attaining meaningful use requires that EHRs meet the broad objectives now further defined as specific tasks and capabilities, including electronic reporting of quality of care (Blumenthal & Tavenner, ), in three stages of increasing benchmarks. Early data suggest these additional incentives and regulations would positively affect quality of care (Buntin, Burke, Hoaglin, & Blumenthal, ), but early post‐incentive analysis is inconclusive (Enriquez et al., ; Kern, Edwards, Kaushal, & HITEC Investigators, ). Nevertheless, it is ultimately anticipated that the adoption of EHRs and meaningful use functions will spur the evolution of learning health care systems that link and leverage patient and population data to provide an up‐to‐date and comprehensive knowledge base that can be readily accessed at the point of clinical care for treatment and disease prevention (Breitenstein, Liu, Maxwell, Pathak, & Zhang, ; Flum et al., ; Kaggal et al., ; Smith, Saunders, Stuckhardt, & McGinnis, ).…”