Electronic Medical Records Don't Save Money, Says Study

"We analyzed whether more computerized hospitals had lower costs of care or administration, or better quality," the authors wrote.

The results: "Hospitals on the ‘Most Wired' list performed no better than others on quality, costs, or administrative costs."

Himmelstein's study is the second this week that disputes the benefits of EMR.

On Monday, The New York Times reported on a presentation by Ashish K. Jha and Catherine M. DesRoches of Massachusetts General Hospital. They compared 3,000 hospitals at various stages of adoption of computerized health records, and according to the article "found little difference in the cost and quality of care" between those that had adopted and those that hadn't.

The authors could not be reached for comment.

Terhilda Garrido, vice president of strategic operations for Kaiser Permanente, also disputed the two researchers negative views of EMR. She says her large HMO has "in fact, seen significant benefits from its investment in Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect, our robust and sophisticated electronic health record."

One of several studies conducted found that "two years after EHRs had been fully implemented, office visits had fallen, with doctors replacing some visits with telephone appointments—and quality measures remained unchanged or slightly improved."

She cautions that the systems may not work well for some institutions. "Merely plunking down information technology—a piece of hardware and some software—does not improve healthcare.

"If a lumberjack upgrades his equipment to a chainsaw but continues to use it the way he used his axe, he won't see much success. He has to change how he cuts down trees in order to make the most of the new technology."

Karen Bell, MD, senior vice president of HIT services for MassPro, the designated contractor for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services quality and improvement effort in Massachusetts, cautions that for most hospitals and other providers, it is just too soon to appreciate benefits of health information technology because the systems take so long to install, understand, and use effectively.

"It's going to take several years, after you've done a full implementation, to see full improvement," Bell says.

Perhaps the Harvard researchers may be "jumping the gun," she suggests. "They have agendas that they would like to see supported. I would love to see a single-payer system in the country too, but I don't think it's going to happen and we have to improve our cost quality equations given what we have."