Health Affairs

Health Affairs, 28, no. 6 (2009): w1160-w1170 (Published online 26 October 2009) doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.28.6.w1160 © 2009 by Project HOPE	New Online   Getting Health Reform Done   After the State of the Union   Incremental Reform   E-Health in Developing World   Most-Read Articles in 2009

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Evidence Of An Emerging Digital Divide Among Hospitals That Care For The Poor

Ashish K. Jha, Catherine M. DesRoches, Alexandra E. Shields, Paola D. Miralles, Jie Zheng, Sara Rosenbaum and Eric G. Campbell

Some hospitals that disproportionately care for poor patients are falling behind in adopting electronic health records (EHRs). Data from a national survey indicate early evidence of an emerging digital divide: U.S. hospitals that provide care to large numbers of poor patients also had minimal use of EHRs. These same hospitals lagged others in quality performance as well, but those with EHR systems seemed to have eliminated the quality gap. These findings suggest that adopting EHRs should be a major policy goal of health reform measures targeting hospitals that serve large populations of poor patients.

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