News Feature | October 3, 2014

ACO Adoption Of HIT Varies

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

ACO HIT Adoption

ACOs aren’t only adopting mHealth and telehealth tools, according to a survey by Premier and the eHealth Initiative.

Premier and the eHealth Initiative have released the results of an ACO survey focusing on health IT. These organizations found that, overall, ACOs are struggling to adopt IT and their adoption of certain types is incredibly varied.

Eighty-six percent had an electronic health record system and 74 percent had a disease registry, yet only 58 percent had a clinical-decision support system and only 28 percent had the capability to build a master patient index.

“While accountable care organizations are providing quality care for many patients, even more could be accomplished if interoperability issues were addressed,” said Jennifer Covich Bordenick, chief executive officer, eHealth Initiative in a press release. “However, the cost of interoperability can be prohibitive for many organizations.”

According to iHealth Beat, ACOs have not been able to adopt the following major IT capabilities:

  • referral management tools
  • remote monitoring devices
  • secure messaging
  • telehealth services

The ACOs cited several challenges to HIT adoption:

  • 100 percent of respondents said accessing external data was challenging
  • 95 percent cited costs
  • 95 percent cited a lack of interoperability
  • 90 percent cited a lack of funding or return on investment
  • 88 percent said integration of disparate data from other EHR systems and other sources was a barrier

“Even when ACOs have successfully adopted and merged HIT systems, they aren’t able to effectively leverage data and analytics to derive value out of their investments given the pervasive issues with data quality, liquidity and access, as well as issues with integrating data from disparate sources,” said Keith J. Figlioli, Premier’s senior vice president of healthcare informatics and member of the Office of the National Coordinator’s Health IT Standards Committee. “The survey proves this is a pervasive problem among ACOs, and it could stymie the long-term vision for ACO cost and quality improvements if not addressed.”