Facilitating Health Information Exchange to Improve Health Outcomes for School-Aged Children: School Nurse Electronic Health Record Access

Abstract Background and Objectives School-aged children with chronic conditions require care coordination for health needs at school. Access to the student's accurate, real-time medical information is essential for school nurses to maximize their care of students. We aim to analyze school nurse access to medical records in a hospital-based electronic health record (EHR) and the effect on patient outcomes. We hypothesized that EHR access would decrease emergency department (ED) visits and inpatient hospitalizations. Methods This retrospective secondary data analysis was conducted using EHR data 6 months pre- and post-school nurse access to students' hospital-based EHR. The main outcome measures were the ED visits and inpatient hospitalizations. Results For the sample of 336 students in the study, there was a 34% decrease in ED visits from 190 visits before access to 126 ED visits after access ( p