Lab Costs In EHRs Influence Providers Decisions
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
Study reveals showing lab costs as part of EHRs helps physicians make better decisions when ordering tests
A study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found, “Including real-time cost of lab tests in electronic health system could make physicians think twice before ordering them. The research project was led by Daniel Horn of the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Division of General Medicine in the US, and is among the first to focus on the impact that the passive display of real-time laboratory costs can have within a primary care, non-academic setting.”
Thomas D. Sequist, MD, MPH, of Atrius Health, the senior author on the study and his research team separated the participants into two groups; one that received real time lab costs through their EHRs and one that did not. Researchers compared ordering rates for a one year period, both before, during, and after the prices were provided to one group of physicians.
Doctors who were shown the prices of labs upfront were less likely to order unnecessary tests. According to the study’s publisher, Springer, “The researchers found a significant decrease in the ordering rates of both high and low cost range tests by physicians to whom the costs of the tests were displayed electronically in real-time. This included a significant relative decrease in ordering rates for 4 of the 21 lower cost laboratory tests, and 1 of 6 higher cost laboratory tests.
Sequist adds, “Our study demonstrates that electronic health records can serve as a tool to promote cost transparency, educate physicians, and reduce the use of potentially unnecessary laboratory tests by integrating the relative cost of care into providers’ decision-making processes.”
EHR Intelligence reports 81 percent of study participants said the cost information helped them make better decisions and showed them exactly what their services were really going to cost. “It’s like putting price labels on goods you buy in the supermarket,” says Sequist. “When you know the prices, you tend to buy more strategically.”
“In the past, the way to make money was to do more,” says Dr. Brent C. James, Chief Quality Officer of Intermountain. “If you know the true cost of providing care, you can ask yourself whether doing one thing is really more important than doing something else. Once I get those costs, I can manage them the way I would if I were building an automobile or a washing machine. Maybe we’ll be able to move health care out of the dark ages.”
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