... The Harder They Fall for EHRs
By
John Pulley
Size does matter, at least when it comes to how quickly medical practices adopt electronic health records.
That's the conclusion of an updated biannual survey, "Physician Office Usage of Electronic Health Records Software," released Monday by SK&A, an Irvine, Calif., health-care research firm owned by Cegedim, a health-care technology and services company.
The EHR adoption rate among the 237,562 U.S. practices surveyed in July was 40.4 percent, up less than 2 percentage points from the previous survey, conducted in October 2010. The rate varied dramatically, however, depending on the size of the practice, according to a news release describing the findings:
- About 75 percent of practices with more than 26 physicians had EHRs, compared with 31 percent of solo practices. EHR adoption rates rise steadily with the size of the practice, the report shows.
- Medical offices with more than 11 exam rooms had a 64 percent adoption rate, compared with 28 percent for practices with a single exam room.
- The EHR adoption rate for offices seeing more than 101 patients per day was 66 percent, compared with 36 percent for offices seeing no more than 50 patients daily.
The depth of owners' pockets also influenced EHR adoption rates, according to the four-page report, which is available by registration through SK&A. Practices owned by health systems reported a 64 percent adoption rate, while the rate for hospital-owned practices was 60 percent. By contrast, practices not owned by hospitals or health systems reported adoption rates of about 39 percent.
The top five practice areas for EHR adoption were dialysis, at 65 percent; pathology, 62 percent; nuclear medicine, 61 percent; aerospace medicine, 60 percent; and radiology, 59 percent.
The practice areas with the lowest adoption rates were psychiatry and holistic medicine at 17 percent.
Minnesota practices led the EHR adoption-by-state rate at 62 percent, while the lowest adoption rate was in New Jersey, at 30 percent.