EMR use improves primary care: new study

There seems to be a lot of buzz in the news lately around the question of whether electronic medical record documentation can lead to a higher quality of care.  Last year, a study came out suggesting that this might be true for diabetes care.  More recently, my attention came to an article published in the Journal of the American medical informatics Association in May 2012, Method of electronic health record documentation and quality of primary care.

A group of researchers led by Dr. Jeffrey Linder at Harvard University’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital studied primary care physicians taking care of 7000 patients with coronary artery disease and diabetes over nine months. The study authors assessed 15 quality measures, three of which were found to be performed significantly less by physicians using a typical dictation system for record-keeping as opposed to those keeping records by electronic medical records systems.  Two of the three standards of care measures that dictating physicians were less likely to provide were tobacco use documentation and diabetic eye examinations.
This parallels my own findings as an endocrinologist using electronic medical records. During the period of my early years before I instituted widespread use of templating, I was much less likely to hit all of the quality care measure marks compared with after instituting templates.  It’s actually quite commonsensical that a medical provider can hit all of the marks if they are prompted by the computer.  In a sense, the care goes on autopilot.  No matter how chaotic a given point in the day of a busy doctor might be, it becomes impossible to complete a note without performing all of the prompts unless doing so deliberately.

There has been at least one or two studies that I’m aware of that have doubted or not found the conclusion that electronic medical records improve the quality of care patients receive.  I think that most likely these studies did not find a significant association because they were not properly designed.  When one considers the volume of quality measures pertinent to a typical patient visit with diabetes or coronary artery disease, there are so many measures that unless every physician has the measures memorized and never forgets anything, gets flustered or has to hurry through the visit, there will almost be a guarantee that not all measures will be addressed at a visit.  I’ll take that bet and win every time.

The fact that there are now at least two studies showing a positive relationship between the quality of care given to diabetic patients in the use of electronic medical records documentation is even stronger evidence that this is a real phenomenon.  Personally, I can’t believe that anybody would think that electronic medical records don’t lead to better care, regardless of the degree of such improvement.  That is, unless they’re not using the templating advantage.

About the author

Dr. Michael West

Dr. West is an endocrinologist in private practice in Washington, DC. He completed fellowship training in Endocrinology and Metabolism at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. West opened The Washington Endocrine Clinic, PLLC in 2009. He can be contacted at doctorwestindc@gmail.com.

1 Comment

  • 1. Informative article!!

    The article has enough data points which emphasizes on the factual resources. The technology today has made the changes in a positive impact and the cloud is becoming the norm for all computing needs that includes EHR’s too. As EHR provides the easy storage of the medical information it becomes a mandate console for the healthcare providers to embrace. Additionally, with adoption the healthcare cost is reduced and the connected care is established between a doctor and a patient.

    Do posts your views at the similar kind of blogs @ http://blogs.docengage.in/2013/05/10/5-reasons-you-should-opt-for-a-cloud-based-ehr/

    Thanks
    Rahul Kapoor
    Brand Ambassador

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