Estimating the Effects of EMR on Hospital Billing Practices

Over the past 10 years, there has been a significant push to adopt electronic measures to help collect, record, and manage health information. The supposed benefits of Health IT in general, and electronic medical records (EMR) specifically, are compelling: reduced costs, fewer errors, and improved patient outcomes. However, widespread adoption of EMR may also have perverse effects such as increased revenue from upcoding. Using multiple data sources including all inpatient and outpatient claims data from the state of Florida over the period 2005-2011, we examine the effect of both basic and advanced forms of EMR adoption on hospital billing charges. Our results show that adoption of basic and advanced forms of EMR reduces annual mean inpatient charges by 10%, while adoption of advanced EMR increases outpatient charges by 12%.