Costs and Benefits of Health Information Technology

The United States health care system is at risk due to increasing demand, spiraling costs,  inconsistent and poor quality of care, and inefficient, poorly coordinated care systems. Some  evidence suggests that health information technology (HIT) can improve the efficiency, costeffectiveness, quality, and safety of medical care delivery by making best practice guidelines and evidence databases immediately available to clinicians, and by making computerized patient records available throughout a health care network. However, much of the evidence is based on a small number of systems developed at academic medical centers, and little is known about the organizational changes, costs, and time required for community practices to successfully implement off-the-shelf systems. An analysis of the usefulness of implementing HIT must take into consideration several

factors: 

• ·         The potential of this technology to improve health care quality, safety, and patient satisfactionand how this potential has been demonstrated.The cost-effectiveness of the technology—the business case for adoption of the technology including the total costs of implementation (both financial and in terms of resources) and any cost savings that accrue. Concerns exist that those who bear the greatest share of such costs are not able to recoup those costs.  

• ·         The ability to generalize the effects of an HIT intervention on costs and benefits in existing systems (using published experience with or research on these systems) to the technology’s use by other health care organizations. The Leap Frog Group and a number of components of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)—requested a review of the research on HIT to compile and evaluate the evidence regarding the value of discrete HIT functions and systems in various health care settings. This  Evidence-based Practice Report on the costs and benefits of health information technology systems, along with an accompanying interactive database that catalogs and assesses the existing evidence was prepared by the Southern California Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC). This report systematically reviews the literature on the implementation of HIT systems in all care settings and assesses the evidence in four specific circumstances: 

1.  The costs and benefits of HIT for pediatric care.
2.  The ability of one aspect of HIT, the electronic health record (EHR), to improve the quality of care in ambulatory care settings.
3. The costs and cost-effectiveness of implementing HER.
4. The effect of HIT on making care more patient-centered.