Healthcare IT makes for better patient outcomes, study finds

Dec 13, 2007

Patients have better health outcomes if they receive treatment at hospitals using healthcare information technology (IT) systems, according to a Florida State University (FSU) study.

Published in the November/December issue of the Journal of Healthcare Management, the study compared overall IT adoption with patient discharge data at 98 hospitals, public and private, rural and urban, across Florida.

Previous studies at academic medical centers have shown that the use of individual IT applications, such as computerized order entry and clinical decision support systems, are associated with desirable health outcomes. But academic medical centers are not typical of most U.S. hospitals, and it has not been clear if the results of these previous studies could be generalized to hospitals across the country, according to Nir Menachemi, lead author of the study and director of the Center on Patient Safety at the FSU College of Medicine in Tallahassee.

Manachemi's group found that although deaths as a result of postoperative blood infections have doubled in the U.S. over the past 20 years, such deaths decreased for patients in hospitals using IT systems in the treatment process, as did deaths from postoperative respiratory failure and other infections.

The study examined three categories of IT use that affect various aspects of hospital operations: administrative, clinical, and strategic. Administrative operations included those IT systems used in billing, payroll, and supply chain management. Clinical operations included pharmacy and laboratory, computerized physician order entry, and electronic health records. Strategic operations involved systems used for managed care, nurse staffing, and executive information.

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