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How Health Information Technology Can Improve Community Health Outcomes
Mariah Dedrick

Health information technology (HIT) has been highly promoted by the government in
recent times through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and
the 2010 Affordable Health Care for America Act. With an aging population, increasing
obesity rates, and many existing government programs running out of money, the
government needed to act quickly to improve community health outcomes while
decreasing spending. Community health outcomes include both individual patient
outcomes and the overall health the community. The government‘s investment in HIT is
designed to improve community health outcomes through the use of electronic health
records (EHRs), communication technologies, and health information exchanges
(HIEs).

EHRs are intended to allow providers to monitor their patients with more ease. Stage
One of “meaningful use” under ARRA requires providers to be able to make reports of
all patients using multiple criteria. These reports can include all patients overdue for a
test, on a medication, with an abnormal lab report, or even with a late payment. This
kind of report allows for quicker tracking of patients to send out reminders, which can be
automatic and electronic. In paper-based offices, staff would need to go through every
chart to obtain the same result. By allowing providers to compile and send these
reports with ease, they are able to keep better track of their patients. This permits
healthcare providers to allocate their time elsewhere, such as having more patient
interaction time or providing the same quality of service to more patients.

EHRs also allow providers to treat their patients with more accuracy and efficiency.
Many of the features within EHRs contribute to better care of patients. Most notably,
electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) eliminates many errors associated with translation
of poorly written doctors notes. Patients get the correct prescriptions faster than with
traditional written prescriptions. EHRs also improve patient outcomes through clinical
decision support system (CDSS). CDSS has multiple features: guidelines, alerts and
reminders, order sets, suggested diagnoses, and dashboards. Guidelines allow
providers to see the recommended course of treatment for a disease. These ensure
that the health industry is using evidence-based medicine to choose courses of action.
Alerts and reminders show the user any medication complications, allergies, or overdue
exams during a patient visit. Alerts and reminders help providers make fewer mistakes
when treating a patient. Order sets allow providers to have a coherent and fixed set of
procedures for a range of medical situations. Order sets are particularly useful in an
inpatient setting during times of high stress, when orders can be complicated. They are
beneficial in keeping to guidelines and having consistency between patients.
Suggested diagnoses in CDSS show a provider possible diagnoses based on
symptoms inputted. This is particularly beneficial when symptoms are uncommon.
Dashboards help providers compare their outcomes with other providers and reports.
This feature causes providers to compete by informing them of their success at treating
patients. Together, these features improve patient health by giving providers tools to
treat patients more efficiently and accurately. If providers use these tools appropriately,

they can improve the health of their community, one patient at a time.

Another way HIT improves community outcomes is through communication
technologies, such as telemedicine, video calls, or e-mail. These methods are
particularly effective in rural populations where patients are far from a provider or with
very ill individuals who need more attention but have trouble getting to the provider.
Providers using these communication technologies can improve community health
outcomes through having more interaction with patients who normally would not get the
attention they need.

A broader way to improve community health outcomes is to incorporate HIEs with
EHRs. HIEs would allow patient information to be transferred securely between all of
their providers. This provides patients with a better continuity of care. With paper
charts, a provider will often prescribe a medication without knowing the full extent of the
patient’s other medications, allergies, or medical history. This can lead to dangerous
complications for patients. Having HIEs prevents many of these errors. Another way to
incorporate HIEs with EHRs is by inputing newborn screening results directly into a
patient’s EHR. Currently, many newborn screening results are delayed or do not get to
patients, so mant babies do not benefit from early detection. By having HIEs, health of
the individual can be improved, thereby improving the health of the community.

HIEs can also be used to submit data electronically to immunization registries. Data
submitted to immunization registries can be used to ensure that children and adults are
current on all of their immunizations. If a patient is not current, they can then obtain
reminders to get immunized. This data could also be used to identify potential high-risk
zones where there are large numbers of un-immunized members of the public.

HIE data can also be delivered to public health agencies. This data can be used to
report disease outbreaks. The sooner public health agencies know about disease
outbreaks, the sooner the public can be warned about hazards. HIEs getting outbreak
information to public health agencies quickly is important for containing the spread of
diseases.

HIT has a huge potential to improve community health outcomes through EHRs,
communication technology, and HIEs. EHRs have many features that, when used
properly, have the potential of bettering patient health. Communication devices could
give all patients the ability to communicate with providers, benefiting underserved
populations. Finally, HIEs provide infrastructure to communicate quickly and effectively
between providers and to immunization registries and public health agencies. This
helps communities to have patient-centered care through this better means of
communication. These aspects of HIT can help our current healthcare dilemma of huge
costs without the desired health outcomes. As long as these technologies are used
effectively, I feel that they are worth the initial a large investment.

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Dedrick, Mariah Paper

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