EHR Adoption Could Exceed 80 Percent by End of 2013

Family physicians are adopting electronic health records (EHRs) at a much faster rate than previous data suggested, reaching a nearly 70 percent adoption rate nationwide, new study findings reveal. 

The study, published in the January/February issue of the Annals of Family Medicine, shows EHR adoption by family physicians has doubled since 2005, with researchers estimating that the adoption rate will exceed 80 percent by the end of 2013.

Findings also reveal a higher percentage of EHR adoption among physicians in comparison to a July 2012 study conducted by the CDC's Center for National Health Statistics, which reported that 55 percent of office-based physicians had adopted EHRs.

EHR adoption rates among family physicians, however, have also been shown to be higher than other office-based specialties. One November study, for example, reported that pediatricians had some of the lowest adoption rates of EHR systems, with a paltry 41 percent indicating they had EHRs. 

Researchers also point to geographical differences in EHR adoption rates. Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon and Utah, for example, had significantly higher adoption rates in comparison to states with much lower numbers such as Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. 

According to study co-author Andrew Bazemore, MD, director of the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Primary Care, report findings offer "some encouragement that we have passed a critical threshold," HealthDay reported. 

Utah family physicians had the highest EHR adoption rates in the country, pegged at nearly 95 percent statewide, according to the study, but Bazemore said, "More work is needed, including better information from all of the states."

North Dakota ranked lowest among the 50 states, with an overall EHR adoption rate of only 47 percent. 

The study was conducted by researchers at the Association of American Medical Colleges, Georgetown University Medical Center, National Center for Health Statistics, University of Colorado Denver, The Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care and Medstar Franklin Square Hospital. 

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Health Technology's 'Essential Critic' Warns of Medical Mistakes

Computer mistakes like the one that produced incorrect prescriptions for thousands of Rhode Island patients are probably far more common and dangerous than the Obama administration wants you to believe, says Drexel University’s Dr. Scot Silverstein.

Flawed software at Lifespan hospital group printed orders for low-dose, short-acting pills when patients should have been taking stronger, time-release ones, the Providence-based system disclosed in 2011. Lifespan says nobody was harmed.

But Silverstein, a physician and adjunct professor of healthcare informatics who is making a name for himself as a strident critic of electronic health records, says the Lifespan breakdown is part of a much larger problem.

[See also: Medical errors continue to dog healthcare.]

“We’re in the midst of a mania right now” as traditional patient charts are switched to computers, he said in an interview in his Lansdale home. “We know it causes harm, and we don’t even know the level of magnitude. That statement alone should be the basis for the greatest of caution and slowing down.”

Use of electronic medical records is speeding up, thanks to $10-billion-and-counting in bounties the federal government is paying to caregivers who adopt them. The consensus among government officials and researchers is that computers will cut mistakes and promote efficiency. So some 4,000 hospitals have or are installing digital records, the Department of Health and Human Services said last month.

Seventy percent of doctors surveyed in September  by research firm CapSite said they had switched to digital data.

But the notion that electronic charts prevent more mistakes than they cause just isn’t proven, Silverstein says. Government doesn’t require caregivers to report problems, he points out, so many computer-induced mistakes may never surface.

[See also: Medical errors continue to dog healthcare.]

He doesn’t discount the potential of digital records to eliminate duplicate scans and alert doctors to drug interactions and unsuspected dangers.

But the rush to implementation has produced badly designed products that may be more likely to confound doctors than enlighten them, he says. Electronic health records, Silverstein believes, should be rigorously tested under government supervision before being launched into life-and-death situations, much like medical hardware or airplanes.

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eClinicalWorks Goes Mobile

With patient engagement now a key component of meaningful use, EMR providers are looking to mHealth to bring the patient into the loop. The latest to do so is EHR vendor eClinicalWorks, which this week launched a new business unit designed to connect patients to their doctors and their electronic health records.

Executives at the Westborough, Mass.-based developer of ambulatory clinical systems say the Health & Online Wellness (Healow) initiative "directly connects patients to their own and family electronic health records, allowing immediate access to personal medical records and facilitating two-way communications between providers and patients."

Girish Kumar Navani, the company's co-founder and CEO, said patient-centered portals like those developed by Google and Microsoft haven't done well because they don't bring the doctor into the conversation. With 8 million customers using eClinicalWorks' electronic patient portal and surveys that indicate physicians are ready to embrace mHealth, he said the timing is right for a platform that can bring both sides together and connect them with clinical data.

"We're tapping into a whole new ecosystem of health," he said, describing the new Healow unit as the "blocking and tackling of mobile health."

"We need to start from the inside out, make it easy for (physicians and patients) to access and share information … and make decisions" based on that data, said Navani.

“In order to transform healthcare, patients need to be engaged,” Navani added in a Feb. 6 press release announcing Healow's launch, which includes a $25 million investment by the company over the next 12 months. “People are invested in and want to be engaged in their health as long as they trust the source of the information. We are confident the tools delivered through Healow will be successful due to the foundation we have built with more than 220,000 medical providers and because its solutions bring together cutting-edge technology and a critical component – the medical provider.”

Navani said the unit's first product will be a free app that enables patients to connect to their own and family EHRs and communicate with their physicians. That app will be available in iOS and Android versions later this month.

Looking down the road, Navani said Healow will develop pathways for integration with home monitoring units and medical devices and an online, open-access scheduling system similar to Priceline. He also expects Healow to develop an API that would allow developers and other parties to write their own apps for the platform.

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