EMR Research Summary

Funderburk, Maisto, and Labbe (2014) worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) and examined whether or not patients’ Electronic Medical Record (EMR) would be able to predict their health related outcomes, based on their treatment needs. Based on data provided from the Veterans Affairs Healthcare Network of Upstate New York (VISN 2), the researchers hypothesized that veterans with multiple health risk factors were more likely to have more frequent visits to their primary care, more behavioral health visits, and more diagnoses than those who only had a few risk factors (Funderburk, Maisto, & Labbe, 2014). By identifying patients with certain risk factors through their EMR data, it is possible that healthcare systems can evaluate whether new interventions or treatments could be modified to better suit patient needs in an effort to prevent disease progression and disease development. Also evaluating whether or not the new interventions and treatments would be more effective than the current, traditional approach of addressing each health behavior separately. This is an important to the psychology field as Funderburk et al. (2014) hypothesized that those with high and moderate treatment needs would be more likely to have …show more content…
Funderburk et al. (2014) found that there was a significant difference in the number of primary care visits and the number of diagnoses in the veterans based on the level of their health needs. Using a linear regression analysis, the researchers found that patients in the High Treatment Need group and Moderate Need group were over 4 times more likely than patients in the Low Treatment Need group to have a behavioral health encounter (Funderburk et al., 2014). This was not surprising as behavioral health issues are often comorbid with other health related