Study: E-Health Records Don’t Deter Testing or Reduce Costs
Doctors who use EHRs may actually order more diagnostic testing, and therefore make health care even more expensive, according to a study published in the Health Affairs journal.
View entire post on electronic health records by Jenny Gold in the Kaiser Health News.
I think selection bias is a big factor in this report. What hospitals had EMRs in 2008? Big teaching hospitals (still probably true today – these things are expensive). What hospitals always ordered more tests? Big teaching hospitals. And just because they looked at doctors offices, does nothing to mitigate this bias, infact it probably enhances it – no stand alone Dr office had an EMR in 2008 – but really big teaching hospitals had remote access to their EMRs for doctors.
Fascinating result.
Interesting, but remember: You have already exposed Woolhandler and Himmelstein as unreliable researchers.
Sorry, but I think ya’ll are knocking this study too much. I can see how plausible those results are even without the study.
So yes, potentially higher expenses give people another reason to avoid doctors that use EHR.
This isn’t surprising. As long as there are perverse incentives, physicians will continue to order unnecessary or redundant medical tests. The solution is to align the incentives with the needs of the doctor, patient and the payer.