Most Long Term Care Facilities Using EHRs
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
Three of four non-profit long term care facilities are now using EHRs
LeadingAge Ziegler 100 released the results of a study finding, “The majority of LZ 100 providers … are implementing EHR/EMR technology (75.5 percent) and POC/POS (83 percent) technologies in at least one of their communities/ operations. Less than 10 percent responded that there were no EHR/EMR or POC/POS systems in place within any of their communities.”
EHRIntelligence writes, “Long-term care facilities have long since adopted technologies to help improve residential life within the system, with more than 90 percent of facilities providing patients with internet access and greater than 80 percent using user-activated emergency response systems. Automatic fall detection was available in 20 percent of organizations, while almost 9 out of ten use some form of access control to prevent patients from wandering unattended. But outward-facing health IT is significantly scarcer, with few organizations participating in health information exchange with external partners.”
“Providers we surveyed show strong commitment to safety, social connectedness, and electronic documentation technologies,” stated Majd Alwan, Ph.D., senior vice president of technology at LeadingAge and executive director of the Center for Aging Services Technologies in an article for McKnight’s Long Term Care News. “We hope and expect to see higher utilization of health information exchange with other providers to facilitate care coordination across settings.”
Despite the promising statistics of EHR and technology use in LTC facilities, there were negative results as well. Few were able to send lab results (25 percent) and even fewer could exchange admissions information or summary reports (16 percent). Remote monitoring and telehealth are in use at 18 percent of facilities but only 10 percent can integrate mHealth data into their EHRs.
“Telemonitoring technologies— including telehealth, remote patient monitoring, telecare, and behavioral monitoring technologies—are key to improving prevention, care management, and coordination,” the survey states. “The integration of data from these technologies into an organization’s EMR/EHR system, as well as the ability to exchange such information with other providers, is also important to providing the care team with comprehensive information about the health and functional status of the seniors for whom they are providing care.”
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