Little Benefit Seen, So Far, in Electronic Patient Records – NYTimes.com
A new study comparing 3,000 hospitals at various stages in the adoption of computerized health records has found little difference in the cost and quality of care.
Reducing the length of hospital stays, according to many experts, should be a big money-saving payoff from electronic health records — as better care aided by technology translates into less time spent in hospitals. For hospitals with full-featured digital records, the average length of stay was 5.5 days; for those with basic computer records, 5.7 days; and those without, 5.7 days.
The differences, Dr. Jha said, were “really, really marginal.”
