Study: Health IT use lowers costs, improves outcomes

When clinicians use health IT systems, good things happen, according to the results of a new study. The study, which was funded by the Commonwealth Fund and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that if physicians increased their use of health IT even slightly, it led to improvements in patient outcomes.

Researchers surveyed doctors from 41 Texas hospitals whose patients had varied conditions, including heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia. Physicians were asked about their use of a number of health IT options, including electronic notes and records, order entry and clinical decision support systems.

When use of electronic notes and medical records increased 10 percent, it was associated with a 15 percent drop in the likelihood of patient death, and when doctors entered patient care instructions electronically, deaths fell 55 percent for some procedures.

To learn more about this study:
- read this iHealthBeat piece

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