EHRs don’t necessarily produce higher quality

Posted by Ken Terry on July 27th, 2007. Filed under: EHR, annals of family medicine, archives of internal medicine, computerization, EMR.

A pair of recent studies has found that the computerization of medical practice doesn’t necessarily lead to better care.

An Archives of Internal Medicine study (Linder, et al.) looked at a cross-section of patient visits in 2003 and 2004, focusing on 17 quality indicators. On 14 of those measures, the researchers found, “there was no significant difference between visits with vs. without EHR use.” On two of the other indicators, performance of practices with EHR was better, and on one metric — prescribing of statins to patients with hypercholesterolemia — EHR users did significantly worse. continues…

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From Medical Economics magazine, more on EHR ...

Poor health literacy increases mortality in elderly

Posted by Sean Keating on July 25th, 2007. Filed under: patient relations, archives of internal medicine, health literacy, mortality rates, older_adults, patient relations.

A report in the July 23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine says that Older adults who cannot read and understand basic health information appear to have higher mortality rates than those with adequate health literacy. continues…

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From Medical Economics magazine, more on patient relations ...