Electronic Health Record (EHR) usage has more than doubled since 2007, according to a recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 78 percent of office-based doctors reported using the EHR in 2013, up from just 35 percent in 2007. This upswing is likely due to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which provides health care providers monetary incentives for implementing the EHR.
“We think that incentives worked,” Esther Hing, the CDC’s lead statistician on the report, told VentureBeat. “There’s certainly a lot of interest in adopting the EHR, especially among primary care physicians. We can see the number of primary care doctors using the EHR starting to increase in 2010.”
However, EHR adoption still has a ways to go. The CDC’s report showed that many health care providers are still in the beginning stages of EHR adoption, which can take time as medical offices must radically re-engineer normal workflows to integrate the EHR, and 40 percent of providers are using the EHR merely for basic tasks.
Read more: https://venturebeat.com/business/docs-get-nerdy-electronic-health-record-use-has-doubled-since-2007/
