The Advisory Board Company and HIMSS Analytics published a report in February 2012, showing hospitals that have implemented electronic medical record (EMR) systems have achieved a wide range of benefits. These benefits include clinical quality, safety of patients, and operational efficiency, as reported by Healthcare IT News.
The report, “EMR Benefits and Benefit Realization Methods of Stage 6 and 7 Hospitals,” supports the conclusion that hospitals with more advanced EMR systems that are further along the development track, can gain substantial benefits.
This study found that these hospitals were able to achieve at least one core measure benefits and safety benefits from their EMR systems. The most common ones were a reduction in adverse drug effects, improvement in patient safety indicators, and improvement in venous thromboembolism.
These hospitals used advanced EMR systems to specifically target clinical objectives, such as reducing adverse drug effects, and improving quality measure for venous thromboembolism, stroke, and others. By focusing on certain clinical objectives, the majority were able to improve on these goals.
Also, when hospitals targeted specific benefit areas, they were more likely to achieve those benefits, such as, improving pediatric asthma, congestive heart failure, and pregnancy.
In addition to the clinical benefits, hospitals reported achieving a number of other operational and administrative benefits, shown below.
The full report can be downloaded here.
To find out more about the benefits of EMR, check out our article here, and our blog post on patient benefits of EMR.