Care coordination and electronic health records: connecting clinicians

Abstract

Objective: To examine the association between use of electronic health records (EHR) and care coordination.

Study design: Two surveys, in 2005 and again in 2006, of primary care clinicians working in a prepaid integrated delivery system during the staggered implementation of an EHR system. Using multivariate logistic regression to adjust for clinician characteristics, we examined the association between EHR use and clinicians' perceptions of three dimensions of care coordination: timely access to complete information; treatment goal agreement; and role/responsibility agreement.

Results: Compared to clinicians without EHR, clinicians with 6+ months of EHR use more frequently reported timely access to complete information, and being in agreement on treatment goals with other involved clinicians. There was no significant association between EHR use and being in agreement on roles and responsibilities with other clinicians.

Conclusions: EHR use is associated with aspects of care coordination involving information transfer and communication of treatment goals.

Figure 1:

Adjusted model of clinician reported care coordination by length of EHR use Model used: Logistic model with GEE estimation, adjusted for clinician age, race, gender, job title, panel size, survey year, level of Health IT use, and includes medical center fixed effects.