Examining the theoretical mechanisms underlying health information exchange impact on healthcare outcomes: A physician agency perspective

• Main Authors: ZHOU, Fang, WANG, Qiu-hong, TEO, Hock Hai
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: health information exchange; patient access; spillover effect; income effect; Databases and Information Systems; Medical Sciences
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/4690; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/5693/viewcontent/ICIS2019_HIE.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Health information exchange (HIE) is presumed to reduce medical costs by facilitating information sharing across healthcare providers. Existing studies focused on different medical costs or one set of costs, and resulted in mixed findings. We examine the effects of patient access to HIE on two of the most important medical costs of a hospitalization episode - test costs and medication costs - through a natural experiment and the discharge data of a hospital. Besides the negative direct effect of access to HIT on tests costs, we also find its positive spillover effect on medication costs, such that more patients having access to HIE in a department would increase the medication costs of patients in the same department. We posit that these spillover effects are caused by income loss but could be mitigated through efficiency improvements. Our analyses confirm our theoretical hypotheses. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.