Is going paperless worth it when it won’t save any actual money?

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act set aside $19 billion in incentives to roll out electronic health record systems. The plan is to improve the health system by making facilities more efficient at administering care so they can pass the savings along to patients.

But a new Harvard study says computerization isn’t helping anything.

The new study (which you can read here) evaluated data on 4,000 U.S. hospitals over a four-year period. It found that the enormous price tag for setting up and operating hospital IT systems outpaces any expected cost savings.

The problem “is mainly that computer systems are built for the accountants and managers and not built to help doctors, nurses and patients,” the report’s lead author, Dr. David Himmelstein, said in an interview with Computerworld.

The push for electronic health records is unlikely to stop, though, and it remains to be seen if the feds’ efforts will be effective.

But the message of the study contains a valuable lesson: Businesses  need to research the advantages to going paperless, and computerization in areas where it will make the biggest impact.

Tags: electronic health records, government, paperless