Health IT Evaluation Measures: Quick Reference Guides
These Health IT Evaluation Measures: Quick Reference Guides provide details about individual measures that can be incorporated into a health IT evaluation plan. Each guide includes a brief description of the measure, summary of current literature on the measure, measurement methodology, and study design and analysis considerations. The guides provide a starting point for evaluators in the development of an evaluation plan for a given measure.
Monitoring nurses' time spent on activities related to patient care allows organizations to measure whether the introduction of health information technology (health IT) decreases administrative tasks, thereby potentially impacting nurse time spent on direct patient care.
This measure allows organizations to systematically assess the impact of implementing health information technology (health IT) with the intent to decrease inpatient length of stay (LOS).
Monitoring the use of secure messaging by patients over time is one way to measure the success of the implementation of secure messaging functionality, which may be made available through a patient portal or a personal health record (PHR).
Evaluating the prescribing patterns of preferred or formulary medications can help organizations determine whether health IT, in particular, electronic prescribing (eprescribing) and computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems with included formularies, impact the use of preferred or formulary medications.
Evaluating the costs of prescription drug expenditures can help organizations determine whether health IT, in particular, electronic prescribing and computerized provider order entry (CPOE) with clinical decision support, impact the use of cost-effective medications.
Monitoring the number of hospitalacquired complications and infections can help organizations determine whether health information technology (health IT) has impacted patient safety in hospital settings.
Monitoring the use of current procedural terminology (CPT) codes can help organizations determine whether health information technology (health IT) improves coding accuracy and completeness by providing decision support for documentation activities.
Medication turnaround time is defined as the interval from the time a medication order is written (manually or electronically) to the time the medication was administered. Monitoring medication turnaround time in inpatient settings allows organizations to measure the impact of their health IT application on the increased efficiency of patient care.
Monitoring who uses computerized provider order entry (CPOE) allows organizations to measure CPOE use by providers versus their proxies over time and is one way to evaluate the success of their implementation.
Monitoring the percentage of verbal orders allows organizations to measure the use of verbal ordering over time and whether that use is trending downward with the implementation of health IT, most commonly, computerized provider order entry (CPOE).
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These Health IT Evaluation Measures: Quick Reference Guides provide details about individual measures that can be incorporated into a health IT evaluation plan. Each guide includes a brief description of the measure, summary of current literature on the measure, measurement methodology, and study design and analysis considerations. The guides provide a starting point for evaluators in the development of an evaluation plan for a given measure. 
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