Diabetics whose doctors use electronic medical records (EMRs) do better than those whose physicians rely on paper documents to track and treat them, California researchers have found.
The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, is among the first to find EMRs can help doctors to better monitor treatment changes and follow-up tests for patients with chronic conditions like diabetes that require close maintenance.
The findings are based on an analysis of medical records for 169,711 patients with diabetes by Kaiser Permanente researchers in California.
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"What we saw in this study is that the [EMRs] really helped our alignment with quality measures and clinical guidelines for treatment," said Dr. Marc Jaffe, with the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Program. "Increases in information availability, decision support and order-entry functionality help clinicians identify the most appropriate patients for drug-treatment intensification and retesting, which leads to better care of patients with diabetes."
Researchers compared the care and treatment of diabetics during a three-year period, between 2005 and 2008, when a healthcare system replaced all paper medical records with EMRs at all of its practices. As each practice switched to electronic records, researchers compared outcomes in patients with diabetes before and after.
The results showed the shift improved monitoring, treatment, glucose control, and cholesterol levels among diabetes patients. The electronic systems also increased the amount and timeliness of clinical information available to clinicians to help inform treatment decisions.
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