Information Technology and Patient Health: Analyzing Outcomes, Populations, and Mechanisms

NBER Working Paper No. 21389

Issued in July 2015

NBER Program(s):Health Care, Health Economics



We study the effect of hospital adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) on health outcomes, particularly patient safety indicators (PSIs). We find evidence of a positive impact of EMRs on PSIs via decision support rather than care coordination. Consistent with this mechanism, we find an EMR with decision support is more effective at reducing PSIs for less complicated cases, using several different metrics for complication. These findings indicate the negligible impacts for EMRs found by previous studies focusing on the Medicare population and/or mortality do not apply in all settings.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w21389

Published: Seth Freedman & Haizhen Lin & Jeffrey Prince, 2018. "Information Technology and Patient Health: Analyzing Outcomes, Populations, and Mechanisms," American Journal of Health Economics, vol 4(1), pages 51-79. citation courtesy of

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