Medical offices owned by hospitals and health systems are the leaders in adopting electronic health record technology, according to the latest results of an ongoing survey released Monday by SK&A, a healthcare information solutions and research provider.
Results from the biannual survey, "Physician Office Usage of Electronic Healthcare Records Software," show the greatest jump in adoption rates between January and October 2010 was with medical offices owned by hospitals and health systems.
SK&A's report is an ongoing study of U.S. physician offices, featuring EHR adoption data and summarized market research from 213,500 medical offices representing 643,000 physicians.
According to the report, EHR adoption at hospital-owned offices grew from 44.1 percent to 54.9 percent (a 10.8 percent increase), and adoption at heath-system-owned offices grew from 50.2 percent to 61.2 percent (an 11 percent increase). Overall, U.S. medical office EHR adoption has grown from 36.1 percent to 38.7 percent (a 3 percent increase).
"It's not surprising healthcare-system and hospital-owned medical offices have the highest adoption rates across the board," said Proteus Duxbury, a managing consultant with PA Consulting Group, an international management and systems technology consulting firm. "Recently added exceptions to Stark Safe Harbor laws have made it possible for primary care physicians to receive aid from healthcare systems, or use the same EMRs, so they become the early adopters who can take the leap of faith with EMR technology."
SK&A is actively measuring the EHR brands that have been deployed in medical offices and the types of EHR software functionality being used by physicians in the office. The most commonly used EHR functions are electronic patient notes (28.4 percent), electronic labs/x-rays (27.3 percent) and electronic prescribing (25.9 percent). In addition, SK&A's survey identifies the medical offices that have not adopted an EHR and is recording their expected timeframes for adoption, the primary factors and decision makers for making EHR purchases, and the awareness of available government incentives.
"The results of the latest survey indicate substantial opportunities for EHR solution providers," said Dave Escalante, SK&A's vice president of Data and Information Solutions. "Most of the opportunity is associated with small, mid-size, and privately owned practices that have yet to purchase and install EHR systems. SK&A's EHR database is able to identify all the medical offices and physicians in the U.S. that represent a business opportunity for our health IT clients, allowing them to develop sales and marketing strategies and target by geography, specialty, office size, ownership, affiliation and other variables."
Other findings from the report:
- Physician offices with more exam rooms, more physicians on staff and higher daily patient volumes have the highest EHR adoption rates.
- Physician specialties with the highest adoption rates are radiology (59.9 percent), pathology (59.8 percent), aerospace medicine (59.5 percent), dialysis (59.3 percent) and emergency medicine (57.6 percent).
- Northern (40.9 percent) and Southern (40.1 percent) states have the highest rates of adoption.
- The top three leading states for adoption are Minnesota (62.6 percent), Utah (55.4 percent) and Wisconsin (52.3 percent).
