EHR Adoption

The Importance of EHR Adoption

Over the past decade, the EHR marketplace has become a burgeoning industry, with the number of EHR adopters increasing in parallel. Spurring and impacting the latter’s investment in EHR adoption are several pits of federal regulation and mandates.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology also plays a central role in physician and hospital EHR adoption, primarily through EHR certification. Under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, ONC was charged with establishing requirements for EHR certification which in turn CMS uses for meaningful use and other health IT-related programs.

Several industry stakeholders have cited the effect MACRA may have on increasing EHR adoption, including Beth Israel Deaconess CIO John D. Halamka, MD, MS. According to Halamka, MACRA could make a suitable replacement to achieve the goals of widespread EHR adoption upon which meaningful use was developed.

Some EHR Adoption Statistics

The latest data brief made available on the HealthIT.gov Dashboard puts the percentage of hospitals with CEHRT at 96 percent in 2015, down nearly a full percentage point from 2014's figure of 96.9 percent. Hospital adoption of basic EHR technology, meanwhile, rose from 75.5 percent in 2014 to 83.8 percent in 2015. All told, since 2008 hospital adoption of the latter rose by nearly nine times, from 9.4 percent to the current figure.

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