Despite government financial incentives rewarding physicians who adopt EHR systems, adoption has leveled off, as providers continued to complain about high up-front costs and other challenges to making the transition. However, a tipping point has already been reached, whereby more doctors are using the technology than aren’t, and the holdouts are now at a competitive disadvantage.
This is according to UBM Medica US’s Physician’s Practice 2012 Technology Survey, sponsored by AT&T, which found that 72 percent of U.S. healthcare providers surveyed are in some stage of electronic health records (EHR) adoption.
Among the findings in the survey:
- More than any other factor, those without an EHR cited high cost as the reason.
- Hospitals have been acquiring community practices in efforts to increase market share and achieve hospital-physician alignment, and those newly acquired practices will adopt their hospitals’ EHR systems.
- The days of paper-based health care recordkeeping are coming to an end.
Via: Health Care Communication News
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