Previous studies of the efficacy of health IT in improving quality of care and patient safety have shown decidedly mixed results, largely because IT isn't properly integrated into clinical and organizational workflows, according to a new report.

The report, by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement (CQPI), on behalf of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, summarizes the findings of 192 earlier academic articles on the impact health IT has on outpatient care.

"Awareness is growing of the need to analyze workflow in order to ensure successful health IT implementation and the potential for health IT to be used in process improvement," the study says.

"We have discovered that some workflow changes associated with implementation seem to be nearly universal, such as the increased workload of physicians who have implemented an EHR. Others may be unique to the context of a particular clinic, such as the refusal of a physician to use new health IT application," the authors continue.

"Unfortunately, most of the evidence that fills this report is anecdotal, weakly supported, or otherwise questionable in terms of scientific rigor."

For further details:
- take a look at this CMIO story
- download the report from AHRQ (.pdf)

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