While a recent survey indicates that HIT adoption is steadily growing among small physician practices, it also highlights the concerns and confusion that policymakers need to address in order to keep the sector moving forward.
According to an email survey conducted by NaviNet, a Cambridge, Mass.-based healthcare communications network, providers who are adopting new HIT have a number of motivations. For example, “nearly twice as many provider offices' IT buying decisions are driven by concern about not being reimbursed versus the potential to earn incentives.”
And in between those two groups are providers who are motivated by the need to manage their practices’ administrative overhead more effectively.
But what is perhaps more remarkable than the different reasons providers for moving to EHRs is the number of practices that are still either confused by the meaningful use discussion, or who state outright that the requirements will not impact their buying decisions.
Specifically, 63 percent “said they were unaware or unsure of what the meaningful use reporting requirements are, (while) 48 percent said that meaningful use requirements will not impact their EMR buying decisions.”
If those numbers hold up throughout at least the small provider category of the healthcare sector, that’s a significant number of providers who are either somewhat in the dark or largely indifferent to the discussions going on among federal and state policymakers.
And two other figures policymakers should be pondering are the 49% of respondents who said that cost remained the primary barrier when it comes to adopting new HIT, and the 26% who say they don’t know how they’ll get a return on their investment.
HHS recently announced a two-year program designed to educate the public about developments in HIT, but it looks like they’ve still got some more work to do with providers, too.
Jeff Rowe blogs daily at Priming the Pump.
