Most hospitals and health systems in the US have instituted EHRs across their enterprises for health data management. However, the realization of value from that significant investment is sometimes lacking. This is often due to improper or incomplete installation, failure to leverage features or an organization that has not otherwise prioritized initiatives to extract value from their EHRs.

CIOs in healthcare are now seeking and forming programs to increase the benefits their hospitals and health systems can gain from electronic health record systems. According to a recent survey of the 1,400+ members of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), the HIT industry should expect an increased focus on the optimization of EHRs. More than 70% of responding CHIME members stated that this coming year’s top IT priorities for their organization will be projects that harness value from their EHRs. And of these respondents, almost three quarters plan to utilize outside firms to assist their internal teams with these projects.

This is a forward-thinking and positive trend which should have tangible benefits on an organization’s bottom line as well as yielding outcomes-based improvement for stated initiatives. More data is of no benefit without using that information in a positive way. Programs like the Unity Health System’s Community Diabetes Collaborative (CDC), which helped Rochester-area patients with diabetes improve their blood glucose levels by 14 percent in the first 18 months, take what could have been background noise and transform it into population health initiatives that improve care quality and save money.