The use of electronic health records led to dramatic reductions in healthcare costs, according to a new pilot program recently completed in Rhode Island.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island sponsored the initiative, which involved supplying EHR systems to 79 healthcare providers throughout the state. Researchers tracked these practices' expenses over the subsequent three years.

The results showed that those who used the EHR system had healthcare costs that were between 17 and 33 percent lower than comparable practices that used paper-based records. Furthermore, the EHR practices showed improvements in 10 measures of clinical quality.

"Every provider believes that they deliver excellent care, but it wasn't until we looked at the EHR data that we realized the reality of our profession wasn't meeting the expectation," said Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, board chairman of the Healthcare Alliance and CEO of Women's Care, which were involved in the study. "You can't improve what you don't measure."

He added anecdotally that EHR implementation allowed the practice to reach a new level in terms of quality and care coordination, calling the improvements "remarkable."