Health Care: Progress in EHR Adoption, but Frustratingly Slow

The move to electronic health records (EHR) is underway, albeit not as quick as some would like.  While the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports that over 114,000 physicians and hospitals have registered for the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs, and thousands of physicians have moved to using EHRs, the adoption rate still remains fairly low.

Somewhere in the range of only 15-20 percent of physicians have moved to EHRs.  Compared to some countries, like Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands where more than 90 percent of physicians have adopted EHRs, the US still has a lot of catching up to do.

But momentum for EHRs seems to be building.  A report by Frost and Sullivan found that the Total market revenue for EHRs is expected to hit $6.5 billion in 2012, which is more than a sixfold increase from the $973.2 million posted in 2009.  Physicians are being motivated by both the incentives and the penalties associated with complying with the US federal government EHR incentive program.  The widespread use of tablet computers is also accelerating the move by physicians to EHRs — by one estimate more than 75 percent of physicians own a tablet device, like the iPad.

The biggest monetary incentive to physicians is the HITECH Act of 2009 which allocates around $30 billion towards providing incentives and encouraging improvements to the use of IT in medicine.  But along with the incentives, there are penalties too.  For example, there are federal rules that now dictate electronic data interchange (EDI), patient privacy laws (HIPAA), and disease classification and coding (ICD-10), and compliance with these rules dictate the need to improve medial IT practices.   Other regulations, like Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010, are designed to improve health insurance and access to health care.

Nancy Fabozzi, industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said that “The Hospitals absolutely understand that they have to have a new business model and EHRs are at the heart of that change.  It’s about collecting, analyzing and exchanging data–they can’t do that without an EHR, which is why for hospitals the adoption of an EHR is inevitable.” is designed to reform health insurance and improve access to care for millions of Americans by 2014.”

Meredith Ressi, president of Manhattan Research, said that “growth in access of electronic health records by patients has been remarkable in the last year.  There’s been strong pent up demand from consumers over the years, but only now has the supply side caught up as a result of the government mandate. This is the beginning of a real shift in care delivery and patient engagement.”