TUESDAY, July 9 (HealthDay News) -- In 2012, 44 percent of hospitals reported having at least a basic electronic health record (EHR), according to an annual report published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Researchers from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, together with Mathematica Policy Research and the Harvard School of Public Health, examined adoption of health information technology in 2012.
According to the report, in 2012, 40 percent of office-based physicians had adopted at least a basic EHR and 44 percent of hospitals reported having at least a basic EHR (up 17 percent from 2011). The proportion of hospitals with at least a basic EHR was almost three-fold higher than in 2010. Forty-two percent of hospitals reported implementing all 14 core functionalities for stage 1 meaningful use, an increase from 4 percent in 2010 and 18 percent in 2011. Thirty percent of hospitals and 10 percent of ambulatory practices reported sending and receiving data through health information exchange efforts, with test results and patient summary care records most commonly exchanged.
"Hospitals, physicians, and other health care providers are clearly taking advantage of recent incentives to embrace the promise of technology," John R. Lumpkin, M.D., M.P.H., senior vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in a statement. "But there is still a significant amount of work to be done to ensure that our health care system is as up-to-date as it can be. These kinds of technologies can lead to safer, higher-quality care."
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