News Feature | June 22, 2015

Small Practices Move EHRs Into The Cloud

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

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According to a recent survey, cloud-based EHRs are increasingly popular among small practices and individual physicians.

According to a Black Book report, 83 percent of small and individual specialty physician practices say cloud-based EHRs are the biggest trend in physician technology. iHealth Beat reports the Black Book survey polled 5,700 small and solo practices covering all medical and surgical specialties.

“The focus of healthcare technology vendors needs to be on mobile, cloud, and data integration to successfully meet the future demands of the changing healthcare landscape,” said Doug Brown, Managing Partner of Black Book in an announcement. “The bigger issues of interoperability and population health outcomes, quality of care reporting and ICD-10 have framed the third generation EHR vendor, and the majority (69 percent) of small practices plan to increase their investment in the advancements made by their current cloud-based vendor.”

Other key findings showed:

  • 38 percent of solo/small practice physicians have moderate to serious security concerns
  • 90 percent recognize that the cloud EHRs have matured and become secure
  • 92 percent of small practices that switched from server-based EHRs to cloud-based systems within the last six months said their concerns of a data breach had lowered

“An increasing number (79 percent in 2015 up from 64 percent in 2014) of new conversions are using software-as-a-service type implementations, driving the growing number of physician practices to cloud-based products,” said Brown.

FierceEMR reports EHR satisfaction in small practices jumped from barely 13 percent in 2012 to 83 percent overall. “As risk sharing increases, so will the demand for meaningful, robust data sharing between providers and payers regardless of the model EHR employed. “ Brown added. “If the interfaces for interoperability between the HIE and stakeholders is too difficult to evaluate and analyze risk, the more likely we will see another round of EHR replacements, cloud and server based.”