OBJECTIVE  To assess the short term association of inpatient implementation of electronic health records (EHRs) with patient outcomes of mortality, readmissions, and adverse safety events. DESIGN  Observational study with difference-in-differences analysis. SETTING  Medicare, 2011-12. PARTICIPANTS  Patients admitted to 17 study hospitals with a verifiable "go live" date for implementation...

Infobuttons have proven to be an important element in modern electronic health records (EHR), providing educational materials to both providers and patients. However, the usage of infobuttons in personalized health records (PHR) is only lightly documented in the literature. Patient-facing infobuttons pose a new challenge because patients have different questions and educational levels than prof...

OBJECTIVE Increasing patient demand for convenient access to their own healthcare data has led to more personal use of the Electronic Health Record (EHR). With "consumer empowerment" being an important issue of EHR, we are seeing a more "patient-centric" approach of EHR from countries around the world. Researchers have reported on issues in EHR sharing including concerns on privacy and security...

OBJECTIVES Transitions in patient care pose an increased risk to patient safety. One way to reduce this risk is to ensure accurate medication reconciliation during the transition. Here we present an evaluation of an electronic medication reconciliation module we developed to reduce the transition risk in patients referred for home healthcare. METHODS Nineteen physicians with experience in man...

Patient portals provide patients with access to a provide-managed electronic health record (EHR). They may provide an interesting approach to increase patient empowerment. The objective of this paper is to provide a first overview of the state-of-the-art and the impact of patient portals. Based on a systematic literature search, we identified five evaluation studies on patient portals. These st...

PURPOSE The study evaluates how providers give patient education materials and identifies improvements to comply with Meaningful Use (MU) requirements. METHODS Thirty-eight patient-provider interactions in two health care outpatient clinics were observed. RESULTS Providers do not uniformly know MU patient education requirements. Providers have individual preferences and find gaps in what is...

Patient-centered healthcare initiatives are underway to enable patients to take more responsibility for their healthcare. To do so, patients must be able to access, utilize, and share their health information. Access to health information through patient portals and other electronic means is increasing with the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), but not all providers have EHRs or pat...

If you are a solo orthopedic surgeon or practice in a small group and are 55 years or older, this article is for you. The answer to the question “When is the right time to begin planning for the transition out of practice?” is now. And planning is the most important word in that sentence. Joining your peers who’ve quit, often rather quickly, because of Obamacare, electronic health records (EHRs...

INTRODUCTION The primary aim of this study was to determine which objectively-measured patient demographics, emergency department (ED) operational characteristics, and healthcare utilization frequencies (care factors) were associated with patient satisfaction ratings obtained from phone surveys conducted by a third-party vendor for patients discharged from our ED. METHODS This is a retrospect...