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Report: Shared IT boosts care coordination, but extra workload poses burnout threat

An evaluation of six Medicare Accountable Care Organizations found that health information technology tools improved patient care coordination.

But they also create more work for providers — enough that a government watchdog warns that their use contributes to burnout.

“Care coordination helps ensure that patients’ needs for health services are met across multiple encounters and settings,” the Health Human Services Office of Inspector General reported Wednesday. “However, the full potential of health IT has not been realized. ACOs vary in the extent to which they can rely on health IT tools.”

Among the OIG’s findings:

  1. ACOs that used a single electronic health record system across their provider networks were able to share data in real time. But if providers within the same network used different EHRs, they still had to share data via phone or fax.
  2. ACOs faced challenges from physician burnout due to the workload of updating and managing EHRs.
  3. Only some of the ACOs had access to robust health information exchanges, which incorporate patient data from providers who fall outside the ACOs’ networks.
  4. Most used data analytics to identify and group patients according to potential severity and cost of their health conditions. But few used analytics to customize care for individual patients.