Project Details -
Completed
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Grant NumberUC1 HS015258
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AHRQ Funded Amount$1,489,942
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Principal Investigator(s)
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Organization
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LocationMartinsvilleIndiana
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Project Dates09/30/2004 - 09/29/2007
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Care Setting
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Population
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Type of Care
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Health Care Theme
The purpose of this project was to evaluate a local health information technology initiative to improve quality of care delivered in Morgan County, IN, through longitudinal electronic patient information across multiple physician practices and Morgan Hospital and Medical Center (MHMC). MHMC provides primary and secondary health care for residents of Morgan County. Historically, 98 percent of patients who receive inpatient care from MHMC are Morgan County residents; yet 76 percent of the hospital care received by county residents occurs outside of the Morgan County, resulting in a fragmented patient record. Study design used a triangulated approach to evaluate impact of the health information technology initiative. Both qualitative and quantitative measures were obtained. Pre-and post-implementation measures were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance techniques. There results included significant gains in efficiency since MHMC's implementation of EMR and clinical messaging services, including the following: 1) 43 percent increase in average number of results and reports received per day (62 versus 89); 2) decrease in time to track missing results from 90 to 7.6 minutes per day; 3) decrease in time to copy results for other providers from 69.6 to 5.6 minutes; and 4) no apparent time savings in filing information in paper-based charts.