Clinical trial NCT00571376: Evaluating the Impact on Quality and Costs of Regional Clinical Data Exchange Programs in New York State
Official title: Evaluating the Impact on Quality and Costs of Regional Clinical Data Exchange Programs in New York State
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Conditions: Quality of Health Care
Health Care Costs
Keywords: Quality of health care
Health care costs
Lead sponsor: Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: The Commonwealth Fund
First posted: 2007-12-12
Enrollment: 218766
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: PROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Patients and health care providers in the Rochester, NY community

Brief summary: The purpose of this study is to measure the financial effects of health information technology and health information exchange in regional health information organizations in New York State.

Detailed description: In 2004, the federal government set an ambitious goal of ensuring that most Americans have electronic health records within 10 years and the presence of a widespread clinical information exchange capability will greatly facilitate this goal. Through HEAL NY, New York State is currently awarding millions of dollars in grants to support health information technology initiatives across the state through regional clinical information exchanges. The financial success of these initiatives is expected to result from improvements in health care quality and efficiency. However, whether these initiatives will be cost saving, as experts assert, and what the return-on-investments of these initiatives will be are unknown. Answering these questions will provide critical information to the nation as we progress towards a national health information network. We will conduct a multi-center financial evaluation of regional clinical information exchanges. The results of the financial evaluations proposed in this study will provide a framework and standardized methodology including metrics for financial evaluations of regional health information organizations and return-on-investment analyses from the perspectives of providers and payers. We will consider the financial effects as driven by changes in quality, safety, and efficiency.

The most advanced community we studied was Rochester, NY, and studying this community allowed us to measure the effects of health information technology and health information exchange on 3 major utilization outcomes (hospital admissions, hospital re-admissions, and repeat medical imaging).

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Patients and health care providers participating in regional health information organizations or their affiliate institutions.

Exclusion Criteria:

* None

Primary outcomes:
measure: Hospital admissions
timeFrame: 2 years
measure: Hospital re-admissions
timeFrame: 2 years
measure: Repeat medical imaging
timeFrame: 2 years
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Usage of health information technology and health information exchange
timeFrame: 2 years
measure: Changes in health care quality
timeFrame: 2 years
measure: Changes in patient safety
timeFrame: 2 years
measure: Changes in health care efficiency
timeFrame: 2 years
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Rochester
country: United States
facility: Rochester RHIO
state: New York
Study officials:
affiliation: Weill Medical College of Cornell University
name: Rainu Kaushal, MD, MPH
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
affiliation: Weill Medical College of Cornell University
name: Lisa M Kern, MD, MPH
role: STUDY_DIRECTOR
References: