Technology Publications and Products

Use of Health Information Technology in Home Health and Hospice Agencies
Author: Helaine Resnick and Majd Alwan
Publication Date: September 2010
This report provides estimates on use of electronic medical records (EMR) in US home health and hospice (HHH) agencies, describes utilization of EMR functionalities, and presents novel data on telemedicine and point of care documentation (PoCD) in this setting. The report uses nationally representative, cross-sectional survey data from US HHH agencies from 2007. Data on agency characteristics, current use of EMR systems as well as use of telemedicine and PoCD were collected. In 2007, 43% of US HHH agencies reported use of an EMR system. 

Patient demographics and clinical notes were the most commonly used EMR functions among US HHH agencies. Between 2000 and 2007, there was a 33% increase in use of EMR among HHH agencies in the US, and use of EMR and PoCD technologies in non-profit agencies was significantly higher than for-profit ones. Finally, HHH agencies generally tended to use available EMR functionalities, including health information sharing. 

Use of Electronic Information Systems in Nursing Homes
Author: Helaine Resnick, Barbara Manard, Robyn Stone and Majd Alwan
Publication Date: March/April 2009
This study defines the extent of utilization of 12 types of electronic information system (EIS) function in U.S. nursing homes (NH), to relate EIS utilization to selected facility characteristics and to contrast these findings to previous estimates of EIS use in NH. The study used data from the National Nursing Home Survey (NNHS), a nationally representative, cross sectional sample of U.S. NH. Data Essentially all (99.6%) U.S. NH had >1 EIS, a figure that was driven by the nearly universal use of EIS for Minimum Data Set (MDS) reporting (96.4%) and for billing (95.4%). Nearly 43% of U.S. NH had EIS for medical records, including nurse’s notes, physician notes, and MDS forms.

EIS use ranged from a high of 79.6% for admission, transfer, and discharge to a low of 17.6% for daily care by certified nursing assistants (CNAs). Ownership, membership in a chain, and bed size were associated with use of selected EIS. Larger facilities and those that were part of a chain used more EIS than smaller standalone facilities. In 2004, NH use of EIS for functions other than MDS and billing was highly variable, but considerably higher than previous estimates.