March ‘Health Affairs’ out tomorrow with health IT studies

The policy journal Health Affairs has just put out a media advisory noting that the March issue, which comes out tomorrow, will have at least three articles devoted to health IT. From the advisory (verbatim):

Studies on EHR:

  • Neil Fleming and colleagues shed light on the financial and nonfinancial resources a small practice needs to implement an EHR system. Using data from  a physician network in north Texas, the authors estimate that the average cost to implement EHRs is $46,659 per physician.
  • Use of EHRs will be accelerated because more than four in five office-based doctors are eligible for federal “meaningful use” incentives, says Brian Bruen of George Washington University and colleagues. Their analysis also highlights gaps in eligibility that must be addressed to further increase the adoption of EHRs, including variations by specialty, size and type of practice, and location.

A paper from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) on the benefits of health IT:

  • 92% of recent articles on health IT have reached positive conclusions, report Melina Beeuwkes Buntin, David Blumenthal and colleagues. In their literature review, they found that papers that assessed provider or staff satisfaction were less likely to report positive outcomes than those that did not.

The embargo on the stories lifts just after midnight Eastern time.