Impact of Electronic Health Records on the Hospital Bed Occupancy Rates in Surgical Units in France: Results from the E-SI (PREPS-SIPS) Study

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of electronic health records (EHRs) on the acute care hospital bed occupancy rates in surgical units across France. This retrospective study was based on information from four national databases. Several multivariate linear models were used to estimate the occupancy rates of surgical inpatient beds (model 1-1bis) and surgical outpatient beds (model 2-2bis), which were the dependent variables in our models. The independent variables were the hospital characteristics. In model 1, the higher the number of EHRs used compared with no EHRs, the higher the occupation rates of surgical inpatient beds (p=0.002). In model 2, the higher the number of care units using EHRs, the higher the occupancy rates of surgical outpatient beds (p=0.024). These data demonstrate the potential benefits of EHRs in acute care hospitals with regards to the surgical bed occupancy rates in France.