After searching the literature on the effect of healthcare information technology on quality, efficiency, and cost of healthcare, researchers found that most of the studies came from four institutions—Regenstrief Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Partners HealthCare, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and LDS Hospital/Intermountain Health Care. These four institutions had multifunctional healthcare IT systems that were developed internally by their own research experts and had been expanded over several years, according to the study published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Without question, the benchmark IT systems demonstrated real benefits in increased delivery of care, reduction of medication errors, and decreased rates of utilization for redundant or inappropriate care. But there is scant information available to help institutions make decisions on commercially available healthcare IT systems and to assess ROI. The authors conclude that more studies are needed to evaluate such systems in community settings; more data published on how healthcare IT affects organizations, workflow, and management issues; and uniform standards for the reporting of healthcare IT research.
