Tracking the delivery of prevention-oriented care among primary care providers who have adopted electronic health records

The Primary Care Information Project is a New York City initiative aimed at improving population health through the improved delivery of preventive care. It has assisted with the adoption of a fully functional electronic health record (EHR) in over 300 primary care practices. Practices with EHRs automatically transmit summary data that can be used to track population health indicators for recommended preventive care. Early analysis, focusing on small practices with fewer than 10 providers serving Medicaid and uninsured populations, showed increases in the delivery of recommended services of 0.1-2.4% per month (p ≤ 0.05). However, measurement of preventive care across this population is limited by some inconsistency of data transmission. This study shows that EHRs can be used to track the delivery of recommended preventive care across small primary care practices serving lower income communities in which few data are generally available for assessing population health.