Hospitals in pursuit of excellence

Electronic Health Records and Ambulatory Quality of Care

This journal article sought to determine the effects of EHRs on ambulatory quality in a community-based setting.

EHR-using physicians were compared to those using paper. Electronic health record use was associated with significantly higher quality of care for four of the measures: hemoglobin A1c testing in diabetes, breast cancer screening, chlamydia screening, and colorectal cancer screening. Effect sizes ranged from 3 to 13 percentage points per measure. When all nine measures were combined into a composite, EHR use was associated with higher quality of care (sd 0.4, p = 0.008).

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