Kaiser Health News

A new study says there's no need to worry about hospitals using their new electronic medical records to generate bigger bills and boost their income. It's been a concern since at least 2012, when the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services sent hospitals a strongly worded letter warning them against using electronic records inappropriately.

The letter followed reporting by the Center for Public Integrity and the New York Times that found hospitals that used electronic records were billing Medicare for significantly more than hospitals still using paper records.

Computers, the theory goes, make it easier to charge for more procedures or more expensive procedures than a paper record would. Dr Ashish Jha, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Julia Adler-Milstein at the University of Michigan designed a study to compare billing records from 393 hospitals with electronic records to 782 hospitals still using paper records.

“To my surprise, we found nothing,” says Jha. “We found that electronic health records didn't really change billing practices at all.” He concludes the study with advice for policymakers: “This worry about excessive billing, the empirical evidence says this should not be a big focus of attention.”