JAMIA: HIE in EDs slashes costs

(from Health Imaging)

Widespread hospital support for health information exchange (HIE) and initial deployment only in emergency department (ED) settings can lower overall societal costs and reduce hospital admissions, according to a study published in the May edition of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Mark E. Frisse, MD, from the department of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and colleagues sought to examine the financial impact of HIE in EDs.

The researchers studied all ED encounters over a 13-month period in which HIE data were accessed in all major emergency departments in Memphis, Tenn. As of October 1, 2010, clinicians had access to over 7.5 million encounter records on 1.7 million patients, 4.9 million chief complaints, 45 million laboratory tests, 5 million radiology reports and 2.1 million other reports and documents. HIE access encounter records were matched with similar encounter records without HIE access. Outcomes studied were ED-originated hospital admissions, admissions for observation, laboratory testing, head CT, body CT, ankle radiographs, chest radiographs and echocardiograms.

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