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Leveraging the electronic health record to improve quality and safety in rheumatology

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Abstract

During the last two decades, improving the quality and safety of healthcare has become a focus in rheumatology. Widespread use of electronic health records (EHRs) and the availability of digital data have the potential to drive quality improvement, improve patient outcomes, and prevent adverse events. In the coming years, developing and leveraging tools within the EHR will be the key to making the next big strides in improving the health of patients with rheumatoid arthritis and other rheumatic diseases, including building EHR infrastructure to capture patient outcomes and developing automated methods to retrieve information from free text of clinical notes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, USA

    Gabriela Schmajuk & Jinoos Yazdany

  2. Division of Rheumatology, Veterans Affairs Medical Center-San Francisco, 4150 Clement St., Mailstop 111R, San Francisco, CA, 94121, USA

    Gabriela Schmajuk

Authors
  1. Gabriela Schmajuk
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  2. Jinoos Yazdany
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Correspondence to Gabriela Schmajuk.

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Funding

This work is supported by the Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality [R01 HS024412] and the National Institutes of Health [K23 AR063770 (GS)]. Drs. Yazdany and Schmajuk are also supported by the Russell/Engleman Medical Research Center for Arthritis and an independent research grant from Pfizer. Dr. Yazdany is supported by the Robert L. Kroc Chair in Rheumatic and Connective Tissue Diseases (I). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality or National Institutes of Health.

Conflict of interest

Dr. Schmajuk has received an investigator initiated award from Pfizer. Dr. Yazdany has received an investigator initiated award from Pfizer.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

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Schmajuk, G., Yazdany, J. Leveraging the electronic health record to improve quality and safety in rheumatology. Rheumatol Int 37, 1603–1610 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00296-017-3804-4

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