Study: HIT is benefitting patients and practices

The evidence that health information technology (HIT) likely is benefitting your patients and your practice continues to mount.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology found that 92% of peer-reviewed articles from studies conducted between 2007 and 2010 concluded that HIT had an overall positive effect on care, including efficiency and quality.

And those benefits are trickling down to smaller providers. Previous studies focused largely on early HIT adopters, which tended to be large organizations.

Among the study’s findings: In three New York City dialysis centers, patient mortality decreased by 48%, and nurse staffing decreased by 25% during the three years following adoption of EHRs. Negative findings most often concerned problems in transitioning from paper records to EHRs.

The article describing the findings can be read at www.healthhit.gov.