Meaningful use of health information technology and declines in in-hospital adverse drug events.
Electronic health records have both safety benefits and unintended consequences. This analysis used data from the 2010–2013 Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System to compare the incidence of in-hospital adverse events among hospitals that did and did not meet meaningful use requirements for health information technology (IT), according to the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society Analytics Database. Investigators found that hospitals that met meaningful use criteria also reported fewer adverse events. Although the study design does not establish a causal relationship between implementation of health IT and the decline in adverse events, the authors argue that these advances in health IT contributed to this patient safety improvement.