Evidence Of An Emerging Digital Divide Among Hospitals That Care For The Poor

Some hospitals that disproportionately care for poor patients are falling behind in adopting electronic health records (EHRs). Data from a national survey indicate early evidence of an emerging digital divide: U.S. hospitals that provide care to large numbers of poor patients also had minimal use of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inHealth Affairs Vol. 28; no. 6; p. w1160
Main Authors Jha, Ashish K, DesRoches, Catherine M, Shields, Alexandra E, Miralles, Paola D, Zheng, Jie, Rosenbaum, Sara, Campbell, Eric G
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Health Affairs 01.11.2009
The People to People Health Foundation, Inc., Project HOPE
Subjects
American Recovery & Reinvestment Act 2009-US
Diffusion of Innovation
Digital divide
Electronic health records
Federal legislation
Health care policy
Health Services Accessibility - economics
Hospital Information Systems
Hospitals
Hospitals - trends
Humans
Information technology
Low income groups
Medicaid
Medical Records Systems, Computerized - economics
Medical Records Systems, Computerized - utilization
Medicare
Poverty
Studies
Technology adoption
United States
United States
United States > US
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Summary:Some hospitals that disproportionately care for poor patients are falling behind in adopting electronic health records (EHRs). Data from a national survey indicate early evidence of an emerging digital divide: U.S. hospitals that provide care to large numbers of poor patients also had minimal use of EHRs. These same hospitals lagged others in quality performance as well, but those with EHR systems seemed to have eliminated the quality gap. These findings suggest that adopting EHRs should be a major policy goal of health reform measures targeting hospitals that serve large populations of poor patients.
ISSN:0278-2715
1544-5208
DOI:10.1377/hlthaff.28.6.w1160