Dive Brief:
- Hospitals using advanced electronic health records slashed per-patient costs by about 10%, according to a new study published June 27 in the American Journal of Managed Care.
- Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina analyzed federal data on five million-plus patient cases at 550 hospitals to draw this conclusion.
- Advanced EHR users were defined as hospitals with healthcare information technology systems meeting meaningful use criteria, which comprised about 19% of the sample. After controlling for patient and hospital characteristics, researchers found that the mean cost per patient admission for hospitals lacking advanced EHRs was $7,938. By contrast, the mean cost per admission for hospitals with advanced EHRs was $7,207, for about a $730 in savings attributable to EHR use.
Dive Insight:
A major premise behind EHR adoption by the U.S. healthcare industry is that the shift to electronic records for patients will save billions of dollars. But it's been tough to find concrete evidence of a return on investment for costly, complicated EHR implementation.
This study seems to offer such evidence. But researchers cautioned that most hospitals may not realize cost savings until many steps are taken in the implementation process and they reach a stage of advanced "meaningful use."
Researchers also noted the study was done in 2009 before meaningful use requirements came into effect, so these hospitals voluntarily adopted advanced health IT infrastructures. And that might mean the hospitals were "visionary" in broader efforts to improve care and reduce costs, beyond just EHRs.
According to industry experts, many hospitals and physicians still are finding it tough to find the ROI on electronic records, at times incurring debt from poor implementation processes. EHR proponents respond that it's only been three years into a highly complex, disruptive process, but the advantages at some point are likely to outweigh the inherent challenges.
