Computerized medicine: good for quality, but not costs

Electronic medical records and the general digitization of medical data and practices are promoted as a way to slow the rapidly inflating costs in the US healthcare system. The push for expanded medical IT has come from the top, with President Obama extolling its virtues and his administration making funding for EMR deployments part of its stimulus package. But many have pointed out that simply throwing computers at a problem isn't a solution unless the software and practices are also in place to allow the medical community to leverage the technology efficiently. A study of US hospital data suggests they may not be: computerization only had a mild impact on quality of care, and it didn't seem to alter costs in any significant manner.

The study will appear online at The American Journal of Medicine Friday. Its authors combined three datasets that collectively track the computerization and outcomes at thousands of US hospitals. Data on the deployment of medical IT systems were obtained from an annual survey performed by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. The survey contains over 20 measures of computerization, including both administrative and clinical functions.