The impact of electronic health records on people with diabetes in three different emergency departments.

Objective: To evaluate if electronic health records (EHR) with prior clinical information have observable effects for patients with diabetes presenting to emergency departments (ED), we examined measures of quality and resource utilization.

Materials And Methods: Retrospective observational studies of patients in three ED (A=5510; B=4393; C=3324) were conducted comparing patients with prior information in the EHR to those without such information. Differences with respect to hospitalization, mortality, length of stay (LOS), and numbers of ED orders for tests, procedures and medications were examined after adjusting for age, gender, race, marital status, comorbidities and for acuity level within each ED.

Study of the factors that promoted the implementation of electronic medical record on iPads at two emergency departments.

The purpose of this study was to understand the factors which promoted the demand for iPads by physicians in two Emergency departments (ED) prior to a system wide implementation of an electronic medical record (EMR). A grounded theory design was employed and 14 semi-structured interviews conducted with ED physicians. Analysis of the interview transcripts was completed using Atlas.

The impact of electronic health records on care of heart failure patients in the emergency room.

Objective: To evaluate if electronic health records (EHR) have observable effects on care outcomes, we examined quality and efficiency measures for patients presenting to emergency departments (ED).

Materials And Methods: We conducted a retrospective study of 5166 adults with heart failure in three metropolitan EDs. Patients were termed internal if prior information was in the EHR upon ED presentation, otherwise external.

Using a stroke database to develop an optimal vascular imaging protocol for ischemic stroke.

Objective: There are many combinations of studies for imaging the cervicocranial vasculature for diagnosis of ischemic stroke mechanism. We demonstrate a simple approach for using data from a stroke database to determine an optimal sequence of imaging studies on the basis of cost minimization and diagnostic yield.

Methods: Our study uses patient data from the Hennepin County Medical Center stroke database, Minneapolis, Minn, to compare two vascular imaging protocols.