Study Examines Levels of EHR Adoption in Community Hospitals

Just this week I posted an article explaining key points of the HITECH Act and EHR conversion.  With hospital incentive payouts set to begin October 1, 2010, and physician payouts January 1, 2011, most providers won’t be able to qualify for those initial dollars.  Beacon Partners, a consulting group, commissioned a survey of executives from 168 healthcare organizations to gauge the extent of EHR preparedness.  While the respondents work for hospitals, the findings can surely be extrapolated to private practices, too.  You can view the slideshow of results at this site: http://www.beaconpartners.com/ehradoption/BeaconPartners_EHR_AdoptionStudy.pdf.

Some key findings include the optimal level of Medicare patients to make the HITECH Act incentives worthwhile, driving forces behind EHR adoption, extent of completed EHR conversion, obstacles in completion and increased employment expectations. 

Some good news to oncology-focused organizations is that providers with anywhere from 41%-75% of their revenue from Medicare will benefit from the incentives.  As this is often the case with oncologists, it is certainly worthwhile to convert to EHR sooner rather than later in order to maximize incentives.  Moreover, the study notes that in those hospitals with the highest physician EHR-adoption rates, patient satisfaction is also on the rise.  Given that by far the most important reason stated for implementing an EHR system is improving patient care (by more than forty percentage points over receiving stimulus funds), the knowledge that patient satisfaction increases post-conversion is encouraging.

A minority of the executives surveyed reported having implemented some form of EHR system but are by no means complete.  They reported that, “These early adopters have migrated from paper to a hybrid record system and are moving along the journey to an EHR.”  At the same time a majority comment that their biggest obstacle to EHR adoption concerns their own internal resources (such as change management and clinical workflow integration).  Nearly half note that they don’t have the necessary resources to successfully implement EHR.

When asked how they expect the implementation to be handled, a project management approach throughout the whole process was preferred.  A majority plan to hire more employees for the conversion or to outsource the project. 

The authors note,

Healthcare organizations…will need a full-service firm with a service excellence philosophy to support their patient care strategy and align the strategic issues facing the healthcare organization, including change management, physician adoption, revenue cycle management and overall clinical transformation.