EHR Adoption Rates in US

On Wednesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the results of its yearly survey on Electronic Health Records (EHR) adoption for office-based physicians. No surprises. Generally speaking, the majority of physicians in ambulatory practice are now using an EHR, and over half of surveyed doctors say that they intend to seek Meaningful Use incentives. The report is also presenting results broken down by state, so you can learn what folks are doing in your immediate vicinity. The more instructive exercise is to compare last year’s survey results

Categories based on the 2013 NCHS urban-rural classification scheme for counties. The full report can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_02/sr02_166.pdf

QuickStats: Management of Patient Health Information Functions Among Office-Based Physicians With and Without a Certified Electronic Health Record (EHR) System — National Electronic Health Records Survey, United States, 2018. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:1381. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6938a8external icon.

A basic EHR is one that has “patient history and demographics, patient problem list, physician clinical notes, comprehensive list of patient’s medications and allergies, computerized orders for prescriptions, and ability to view laboratory and imaging results electronically”. Although the survey instrument in 2011 did ask about more advanced functionality and is practically identical to the 2010 instrument, the CDC did not publish a separate number for those with fully functional systems in 2011. Although I cannot be certain, I would assume that most of the growth in 2011 was fueled by certified EHRs, which by definition should be fully functional. So if I had to guess, and I hope CDC will release the numbers so I don’t have to, I would estimate that in 2011 we have at least 20% of physicians using fully functional systems, which is roughly double what we had in 2010.