EMR Analysis Detects Childrens’ Growth Disorders

EMRs can be used to detect growth disorders in children, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association . The study, which was written up in FierceEMR, used a special automated growth monitoring algorithm integrated into an EMR system to track childrens’ growth.

To conduct the study, researchers compared three “control” years to an “intervention” year. An annual average of 33,029 children were screened, according to FierceEMR.

Researchers found that in a control year an average of four children were diagnosed with a growth disorder. During the intervention year, however, 28 new diagnoses of growth disorders were made among 32,404 children, FierceEMR reports.

Looked at another way, the rate of growth disorder diagnoses was 0.1 per 1000 screened children in the control years versus 0.9 per 1000 screened children in the intervention year, FierceEMR noted.

These study results are part of an emerging body of literature suggesting that EMRs to help clinicians detect and manage disease states.

For example, another study appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that EMRs can be associated with a drop in emergency department visits and hospitalizations among diabetics.  That study, which analyzed all of the 169,711 records for patients enrolled in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California diabetes registry during a four-year period, found a 10.5% decline in hospitalizations for preventable ambulatory care sensitive conditions where EMRs were in use.

Another study, which recently appeared in BMJ Quality & Safety, recently concluded that EMRs can help reduce hospital readmissions of high-risk heart failure patients by sorting out high from low risk patients in the ED.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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