Study: In 2011, more than half of doctors adopted an EHR system

Last year, 55 percent of physicians had adopted an electronic health record (EHR) system. That’s according to a study report issued this July by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Younger doctors are embracing EHR at higher rates, according to the study. It found that 64 percent of physicians under the age of 50 had adopted an EHR system, compared to 49 percent of doctors age 50 and over.

Larger physician practices are more likely to implement EHR than small practices. The study found that 86 percent of practices with 11 or more physicians adopted EHR, compared to 62 percent of practices with 3 to 10 doctors, and just 29 percent of solo practitioners.

The majority of physicians who have adopted an EHR system (85 percent) were either very satisfied (38 percent) or somewhat satisfied (47 percent) with their system. About 15 percent of providers were either very dissatisfied (5 percent) or somewhat dissatisfied (10 percent) with their EHR system, the report said. More than two-thirds of adopters (71 percent) said they would buy their EHR system again. 

In terms of benefits gained from EHR, 74 percent of adopters reported having accessed a patient’s chart remotely and 50 percent said they had been alerted to critical lab values by using their EHR system within the past 30 days. Nearly three-fourths (74 percent) also reported that using EHR had resulted in enhanced overall patient care.

The report, entitled “Physician Adoption of Electronic Health Record Systems: United States, 2011,” was authored by Eric Jamoom, Paul Beatty, Anita Bercovitz, David Woodwell, Kathleen Palso, and Elizabeth Rechtsteiner of the NCHS. 

The data for the report came from a mail survey of more than 5,200 office-based physicians, with almost 3,200 doctors responding.

The full report is available online (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db98.pdf).