Study suggests electronic health records don't improve care for walk-in visits

HealthDay (7/11, Gardner) reports, "Electronic health records make little difference in the quality of medical care, at least when it comes to walk-in doctor visits," according to study findings published in the July 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. "To see if electronic health records, as they are used now, had an effect on quality," researchers lead by Dr. Jeffrey Linder "reviewed ambulatory care visits to non-federally funded, community, office-based physician practices throughout the United States. Then the researchers cross-referenced these visits with 17 ambulatory quality indicators." Overall, they found that "there was no difference in performance between ambulatory visits with and without use of electronic health records." But, "visits to medical practices using electronic health records performed slightly better on two indicators: avoiding tranquilizers for patients with depression and avoiding routine urinalysis during general medical examinations." Electronic health records "have been proposed as a solution to improving health quality in the United States, where an estimated 100,000 deaths from medical errors occur each year. President George Bush has called for electronic health records for most Americans and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a 10-year plan to computerize healthcare." The Wall Street Journal (7/10, Francis) Health Blog also reported on the story.