Grant: Operating Grant

Canada has historically been behind other industrialized countries in terms of implementing electronic medical records (EMRs) but in recent years significant resources have been put towards the uptake of EMRs particularly in primary care. Yet, whether EMRs improve patient health and healthcare delivery has not been clearly established. We propose a program of research to examine the question, "Do EMRs in primary care improve quality of patient care?" This program of research will develop methods to accurately measure quality both within the EMR and in administrative data, determine the if the EMR, physician or patient factors lead to better quality of care and test if quality of care can be improved with EMR tools. This program of research will utilize the unique resource of the Electronic Medical Record Administrative data Linked Database (EMRALD) at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). EMRs contains detailed clinical information but are not necessarily readily accessible for analysis whereas as administrative data (hospitalization information, physician billing and drug benefit data) is much broader in scope and covers the entire population of a province or even the country. The environment of full primary care EMR data linked to administrative data is not available anywhere else in Canada. This program of research will expand the capacity for doing health services and health informatics research in the primary care setting by bring together the methods and experience developed with EMRALD in Ontario with the theoretical frameworks (EMR adoption, circle of care) and technologic skills and tools developed by the eHealth Observatory in BC. An additional goal of this program of research is to provide an excellent training ground for students in the disciplines of health informatics and primary care research, both of which are rapidly developing fields of research in Canada.