Report: 70% of U.S. hospitals close to EMR adoption

Apr 6, 2009

The majority of U.S. hospitals are close to adoption of healthcare IT applications as defined by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to David Garets, president and CEO of HIMSS Analytics, a research unit of the Chicago-based Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

Data from the HIMSS Analytics Database, which tracks IT adoption milestones from 5,166 nongovernmental U.S. hospitals, reveal that 67% of these hospitals need to add only one or two healthcare IT applications to be compliant.

The applications, as defined by HIMSS Analytics, include computerized physician order entry, clinical documentation, clinical decision support, and/or major auxiliary department information systems.

While only 6% of U.S. hospitals report comprehensive adoption of healthcare IT applications, the HIMSS Analytics electronic medical record (EMR) adoption model defines more specific adoption trends that can be measured. Developed in 2005, this model has become an industry standard for measuring the progress in EMR adoption by healthcare organizations.

As of December 2008, based on an eight-stage EMR implementation process, HIMSS Analytics reports:

31.2% of hospitals are at Stage 2 and have implemented a clinical data repository that contains and facilitates physician review of orders, lab results, radiology images and reports, and prescription drug information.
35.7% are at Stage 3 and have also implemented nursing documentation capabilities in at least one unit of the hospital and have clinical decision-support systems to support nursing procedures.
6% have advanced EMR capabilities such as computerized practitioner order entry, physician documentation, data warehousing and mining capabilities, and full radiology PACS.

Stage 7 of the model reflects a fully paperless environment. Fifteen hospitals are being honored at the HIMSS 2009 annual meeting for achieving this status: 12 hospitals of Kaiser Permanente, headquartered in Oakland, CA, and three hospitals of NorthShore University Health system, based in Evanston, IL.

About 40% of doctors use electronic records, December 15, 2008