And the survey says…

How’s that EHR adoption thing going? I am never sure myself with the snippets of information I read every day. Here are some facts and numbers reported by current surveys to help put things in perspective.

CDC survey data:
Shows that EHR adoption rates among providers of uninsured non-Hispanic Black patients are lower than for providers of privately insured non-Hispanic White patients.

SK&A biannual survey data reports:

  • 10 percent increase of hospital- and health system-owned medical practices adopted EHRs between Jan. and Oct. 2010. This is significantly higher than the three percent increase in overall EHR adoption rate.
  • Physician offices with more exam rooms, more physicians on staff and higher daily patient volumes had the highest adoption rates.
  • Northern and Southern states had the highest rates of adoption, at 40.9 and 40.1 percent, respectively.
  • The top three leading states for adoption were Minnesota (62.6 percent), Utah (55.4 percent) and Wisconsin (52.3 percent).

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IT industry trade group CompTIA survey:
Half of all providers have some sort of EHR, 34% reporting comprehensive use and 16% reporting partial use. 20% of all providers surveyed reported they were not considering implementation of any EHR. CompTIA sees broader adoption in the next 12 months.

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Epocrates 5th Annual Future Physicians of America survey:
Reporting the survey results at the fall 2010 Mobile Health Expo, current vs. last year medical students were
twice as likely to turn to mobile references. Nearly 80% use their mobile reference daily especially for drug doses and interactions.

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MGMA membership survey:
Reporting results at the annual conference in New Orleans last month, office based physician owed practices had a higher median revenue/FTE Physician last year. Operating cost per physician were higher but net still resulted in nearly $50K per physician. The survey also showed benefits rising after five years of EHR use stating the biggest financial investments are in the first year.

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Stratus Technologies/ITIC survey results:

  • Surge in EHR adoption, more than 70% of organizations have or plan to implement EHRs. 6% are in the process of deploying an EHR system now, 35 percent plan to launch an on-premise system within the next year and 37 percent within the next 20 months.
  • Awareness that downtime causes prescription errors and inaccurate data recording, 11% say inability to access EHR files would cause minor disruptions while 64 percent said there would be notable disruptions, these disruptions would be mainly administrative; processing insurance claims and scheduling patient appointments were the most frequently cited at 67 and 53 percent. 49% said EHR system disruptions can increase the potential for patient data recording errors and 32% said it could cause errors in prescribing medications.

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