The Impact of IT on Quality of Care: Evaluation of an Integrated Chronic Disease Management System

Fragmentation of health care service delivery is one of the main challenges in North American health systems. IT is often seen as a solution to fragmentation in care delivery. In this paper, we study the impact of electronically integrating primary care physicians, specialists, hospitals, and pharmacists, on the quality of care delivered to patients. We hypothesize that an electronically integrated prescription, drug, and disease management system will have both a direct and an indirect effect on quality of care. The results of our study based on data from before and after electronic integration, from a matched set of 15,626 patients with electronic integration and 15, 626 patients in a control group, who visited over 95 physicians in a large North American health network, show that patients treated through the electronically integrated system had better quality of care in the follow-up period and a higher continuity of care, compared to the control group.