With the Medicare and Medicaid incentives for health IT use announced in the recent economic stimulus package, almost 70 percent of U.S. hospitals are only two or fewer steps away from having the health IT applications necessary to deliver the likely objectives of “meaningful use” for electronic health records, according to HIMSS Analytics.
While only six percent of hospitals report comprehensive adoption of the health IT applications associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s (ARRA) EHR criteria--including major ancillary department information systems, clinical documentation, computerized physician order entry, and clinical decision support--67 percent need to add only one or two of these applications to have this threshold of EHR functionality available for their clinicians’ use.
“Our data show that the majority of U.S. hospitals tracked by the HIMSS Analytics Database are just two stages or less away from having the applications implemented to achieve an electronic medical record tool capable of realizing ‘meaningful use’ objectives,” said David E. Garets, HIMSS Analytics president and CEO.
View comparison data from 2006 to 2008.
