The effectiveness of Medicaid Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records and Emergency Department Visits among Patients with Chronic Conditions in Florida

Context. Since 2011, the US federal government has spent billions of dollars in incentives for provider adoption and meaningful use (MU) of electronic health records (EHRs). These incentives were catalyzed by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 that mandated all public and private healthcare providers adopt and demonstrate MU of EHRs. Although the use of EHRs has the potential to yield more efficient use of emergency department (ED) services over time, the existing evidence has been limited and inconsistent.

Objective. The purpose of our study is to examine the associations between healthcare providers that participated in the Florida Medicaid MU (Stage 1 and Stage 2) incentive program for EHRs and ED visits for patients’ with specific chronic diseases (i.e., diabetes, hypertension, COPD, asthma).

Design, Setting, and Participants. The data for this study came from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (FAFCA) and arrived to the data custodian three weeks ago. ED visits pre and post implementation of the EHR MU from 2006-2017 will be to Florida Medicaid EHR MU participating providers through their National Provider Identifier (NPI) number. The data will then be linked to the County Area Health Resources File (AHRF) 2017-2018 release.

Data Analysis and Results: Multivariable regression with patient-level fixed effects analyses will be conducted adjusting for trends over time. Results will be presented comparing pre-and post EHR MU implementation.