J. Antas wrote:
Be careful here: it depends on what systems, how they were used, what information was captured (versus what used to be captured on paper) and many other factors. Including how the study was done.A study published at the Acta Anaesthesiol Scand. (2005 Jan;49(1):62-5.) documents what seems to be an emerging (and rather unexpected) trend: Clinical IT (HIS) systems increase the time that healthcare workers spend documenting their activities and not the other way around.
One could always argue that those systems bring other advantages to the
patient and to the care providers, but the fact still remains: they take
extra time from the healthcare providers and we should be aware of that.
I just reviewed four finalist papers for inclusion in the EHR section of the IMIA yearbook 2005, and none reported this trend; from memory 2 reported the reverse trend, and all reported better quality in some form.
- thomas beale
