NASHVILLE, TN – A study published in the December issue of Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, may compel more hospitals to adopt healthcare IT for safety reasons.

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center study revealed that the ability to deliver safe care may be compromised by healthcare providers in training transition from one environment to another, in which there are wide differences in systems-based practice.

"Many observers have speculated that the transition away from technology might make healthcare providers less comfortable with the system in which they practice, but no studies had been completed to assess this question," said the study's lead author Kevin Johnson, MD, associate professor and vice chair of the Vanderbilt Department of Biomedical Informatics.

"Performing Without a Net: Transitioning Away From a Health Information Technology-Rich Training Environment" appears to be the first to address this concern, he said.

"We suspect that many students did not realize the tremendous impact that technology plays on the system of care," he said.

Johnson estimated that most university hospitals - versus medical schools - are adopting healthcare IT between 20 and 30 percent. "This number has been relatively stable, and promises to increase in the next 10 years with federal incentives and an increasing appreciation for the difficulty of practicing medicine safely without some HIT," he said.

While many hospitals have healthcare IT, Johnson said it might not be fully adopted in settings where students and residents practice. "These hospitals, as well as those that require medical trainees to rotate through a variety of settings, may actually have less of a problem with the transition than this paper describes, because of the wide variety of practice sites to which their trainees are exposed," he said.

Vanderbilt is addressing the problem by educating its medical students of the "unique nature" of its training environment through lectures early in the fourth year of medical school, he said.

"We also plan to survey this year's students to see if their knowledge about the state of HIT adoption is accurate," he said. "We will use these results to create a series of discussions that will be required for all fourth-year students."