The Financial Impact of Health Information Exchange on Emergency Department Care

How technology impact Hospitals? It's incredible to see how the use of technology in hospitals can reduce health care cost and even decrease hospitals admissions. Let's take a look of this interesting study....

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Study: Data Exchange Cut Costs, Hospital Admissions in Memphis

Twelve hospitals in the Memphis, Tenn., area that shared electronic health record data among emergency departments achieved annual cost savings of nearly $2 million and had fewer hospital admissions, according to a study published on Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Healthcare IT News reports.
The study -- titled, "The Financial Impact of Health Information Exchange on Emergency Department Care" -- is the first in the U.S. to measure the city-wide effects of health information exchange on ED care, according to Healthcare IT News (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 11/8).

Study Methodology

For the study, Vanderbilt University researchers examined all occurrences in which health information exchange data were accessed in the 12 facilities' EDs over a period of 13 months (Robeznieks, Modern Healthcare, 11/8). The researchers compared those records with others in which data from a health information exchange were not accessed (Healthcare IT News, 11/8).
The largest hospital in the study did not gain access to the data exchange until the 10th month of the study.
The researchers analyzed a number of metrics that included hospital admissions that originated in the ED, as well as admissions for:

• Ankle radiographs;
• Body CT use;
• Chest radiographs;
• Echocardiograms;
• Laboratory testing;
• Head CT use; and
• Observations.

Results

The study found that shared access to health information exchange data contributed to:

• $1.95 million in annual total savings, 97.6% of which stemmed from reduced hospital admissions;
• $1.07 million in annual net savings after the exchange's operational costs were subtracted;
• 191 fewer hospitalizations at the 11 hospitals that had data exchange access for 13 months; and
• 221 fewer hospitalizations in the largest hospital with access for only three months (Modern Healthcare, 11/8).

Mark Frisse -- a lead author of the study and professor of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University -- said that the study could serve as a national model, adding that "the savings from this study are less than 2% of the overall savings these technologies can afford if every physician's office is connected" (Healthcare IT News, 11/8).

Read more: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2011/11/9/study-data-exchange-cut-costs-hospital-admissions-in-memphis.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ihealthbeat+%28iHB%29#ixzz1dRztUz1F