Digital Records May Not Cut Health Costs

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Tuesday March 06, 2012

Digital Records May Not Cut Health Costs, Study Cautions

By STEVE LOHR

Computerized patient records are unlikely to cut health care costs and may actually encourage doctors to order expensive tests more often, a study published on Monday concludes.

Industry experts have said that electronic health records could generate huge savings — as much as $80 billion a year, according to a RAND Corporation estimate. The promise of cost savings has been a major justification for billions of dollars in federal spending to encourage doctors to embrace digital health records.

But research published Monday in the journal Health Affairs found that doctors using computers to track tests, like X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging, ordered far more tests than doctors relying on paper records.

The use of costly image-taking tests has increased sharply in recent years. Many experts contend that electronic health records will help reduce unnecessary and duplicative tests by giving doctors more comprehensive and up-to-date information when making diagnoses.

The study showed, however, that doctors with computerized access to a patient’s previous image results ordered tests on 18 percent of the visits, while those without the tracking technology ordered tests on 12.9 percent of visits. That is a 40 percent higher rate of image testing by doctors using electronic technology instead of paper records.

The gap, according to the study, was even greater — a 70 percent higher rate — for more advanced and expensive image tests, including M.R.I. tests and CT, or computerized tomography, scans.

“Our research raises real concerns about whether health information technology is going to be the answer to reducing costs,” said Dr. Danny McCormick, the lead author of the study, who is an assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School and a member of the department of medicine at the Cambridge Health Alliance, a health system north of Boston.