Nurses Know: EHRs Improve Patient Safety

The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) publicized the results of a study that AHRQ had funded. This new study adds yet one more element of documentation to something we already knew: electronic health records (EHRs) improve nursing care quality, patient safety, and effectiveness.
As the article on the AHRQ website noted, “University of Pennsylvania researchers surveyed 16, 362 nurses working in 316 hospitals in four states (California, Florida, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). Nurses were asked about their workload and patient outcomes, as well as their hospital’s patient safety culture using items from the AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture. Of the 316 hospitals, only seven percent had a basic EHR system functioning on all patient care units,” 

The result? Nurses from hospitals with fully implemented EHRs were “significantly less likely to report unfavorable outcomes” than were those in hospitals without fully implemented EHRs. Indeed, AHRQ noted, “Fewer nurses in the fully implemented hospitals reported frequent medication errors, poor quality of care, and poor confidence in a patient being ready for discharge.” They were also 14 percent less likely to report that “things fell between the cracks” when patients were transferred between units.