The use of electronic health records can help track preventive care efforts and boost quality in primary care settings, according to a commentary published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, CMIO reports.
The commentary was written by Samantha De Leon and Sarah Shin of the New York City Primary Care Information Project.
Focus on NYC Project
The commentary examined PCIP, a program that aims to improve population health through preventive care efforts that target avoidable deaths and complications from chronic conditions. PCIP includes about 25% of the 9,000 primary care providers in New York City who serve about two million patients.
The initiative helped primary care practices adopt EHRs so that health care providers could transmit data to PCIP to track population health indicators in preventive care.
Conclusions
According to the commentary, early data analysis on smaller practices showed that use of an EHR increased the delivery of preventive services.
The commentary noted that practices using EHRs to track population health could assess information quicker and use data sources to cut additional information collection costs.
The commentary also noted that health care providers can use secured information networks to aggregate or summarize patient data (CMIO, 8/23).