Review Finds No Evidence That Hospitals Use EHRs To Upcode Medicare Claims

A review of 393 for-profit hospitals, hospitals in competitive markets, and hospitals with a substantial proportion of Medicare patients, that all adopted electronic health records (EHR) from 2008-2012, and 782 hospitals that had not adopted an EHR, found that the first group did not use their EHR to upcode in order to obtain higher reimbursement from Medicare. Between the pre- and post-adoption periods, payment per discharge to EHR adopters grew by $849, and for the non-adopters this payment grew by $945.

These findings were reported in “No Evidence Found That Hospitals Are Using New Electronic Health . . .