TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dranove,David
AU  - Forman,Christopher
AU  - Goldfarb,Avi
AU  - Greenstein,Shane
TI  - The Trillion Dollar Conundrum: 
Complementarities and Health Information Technology
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18281
PY  - 2012
Y2  - August 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18281
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18281.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David Dranove
Department of Management and Strategy
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University
2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
E-Mail: d-dranove@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Chris Forman
Georgia Institute of Technology
Scheller College of Business
800 West Peachtree Street, NW
Atlanta
GA 30308
USA
E-Mail: chris.forman@scheller.gatech.edu

Avi Goldfarb
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
105 St George St
Toronto, ON M5S 3E6
E-Mail: agoldfarb@rotman.utoronto.ca

Shane Greenstein
The Elinor and Wendell Hobbs Professor
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University
2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL  60208-2013
Tel: 847/467-5672
Fax: 847/467-1777
E-Mail: greenstein@kellogg.northwestern.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2013-01-01
AB  - We examine the relationship between the adoption of EMR and hospital operating costs. We first identify a puzzle that has been seen in prior studies: Adoption of EMR is associated with a slight cost increase. We draw on the literature on IT and productivity to demonstrate that the average effect masks important differences across time, locations, and hospitals. We find: (1) EMR adoption is initially associated with higher costs; (2) At hospitals with access to complementary inputs, EMR adoption leads to a cost decrease after three years; (3) Hospitals in unfavorable conditions experience increased costs even after six years.
ER  -