The impact on health outcomes of implementing electronic health records to support the care of older people in residential aged care: A scoping review

Aim: The implementation of electronic health records (EHRs) in the aged care sector has been shown to improve efficiency and quality of care, administrative and funding processes. The aim of this study was to examine whether implementing EHRs and/or interventions leveraging EHRs in residential aged care facilities has any impact on health outcomes for residents and to review and summarise any published evidence. Methods: Using the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines for conducting scoping reviews, we searched PubMed, CINAHL, Embase, Cochrane and Scopus databases for articles describing the impact of EHRs and/or EHR-based interventions on health outcomes for residents in residential aged care. We included journal articles published in English between 2009 and 2019. After identifying articles meeting the inclusion criteria, we extracted individual findings and produced a narrative summary. Results: Out of 6576 articles identified through database searches, seven met our inclusion criteria. The articles varied in study design, experimental methods, sample sizes and health outcomes assessed but there were no randomised controlled trials: four articles employed quantitative methods and three employed both quantitative and qualitative methods. The implementation of EHR-based interventions had positive impact on outcomes related to excessive weight loss, malnutrition, mobility, weighing of residents and use of antipsychotic medicines but had mixed impact (i.e., positive impact in some studies but non-significant or negative impact in others) on pressure ulcers, activities of daily living, behavioural symptoms, use of physical restraints and signs of depression. We also found that these interventions had no statistically significant impact on medication discrepancies, adverse drug events, falls or mortality. Conclusion: In conclusion, research in this area is not yet comprehensive enough to reach a definitive conclusion on the impact of EHR-based interventions on health outcomes in residential aged care. As provider organisations increasingly implement EHRs, more research is needed to study their impact on resident health outcomes and examine how this impact eventuates.