News: Study says not to blame EHRs for upcoding

After anecdotes that electronic health records (EHR) cause upcoding, Julia Adler-Milstein of the University of Michigan and Ashish Jha of the Harvard School of Public Health decided to delve into the data to see if it was true. Their study—which examined payments against patient acuity at both EHR integrated and non-EHR hospitals of similar size and characteristics—essentially proved the anecdotes wrong since payment per discharge were “essentially the same” between both hospital sets, the AHA’s NewsNow reported.

“This study is welcome news for the nation’s hospitals and policymakers, allowing them to shift focus to optimizing use of EHRs to improve patient care,” said Chantal Worzala, AHA director of IT policy.