News Feature | October 25, 2013

One Quarter Of Hospitals In EMR Standstill

Source: Health IT Outcomes
Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Despite the constant buzz around electronic records and MU requirements, 25 percent of hospitals have made no EMR progress in half a decade

HIMSS Analytics provides an Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) for hospitals and other eligible providers to track their progress towards meeting Meaningful Use requirements. It is noted in the introduction, “This is a critical time for health IT. Hospitals and other eligible providers have until 2015 to demonstrate meaningful use of certified Electronic Medical Record (EMR) technology before being penalized.”

HIMSS notes EMRAM - an eight-step process that tracks progress against other healthcare organizations - helps organizations become operational stage by stage while aligning their IT initiatives with their business strategies.

Using scores from EMRAM, HIMSS found hospitals in many stages, but their monitoring also found a number of hospitals have not been making any advances. The good news according the Lorren Pettit, VP of market research for HIMSS Analytics is, “HIMSS Analytics staff recently analyzed the quarterly EMRAM progression of 4,811 hospitals during the last five years (Q2 2008 and Q2 2013). As was expected, the vast majority of all U.S. hospitals (73.7 percent) have advanced at least one EMRAM stage during this period.” Half of these showed rapid advancement through the stages, and 20 percent advanced four or more stages in just five years.

The bad news, again according to Pettit, is “roughly one-quarter of the hospitals we looked at showed no progression whatsoever during this period. They have remained at the same EMRAM stage the last five years. Moreover, just over four percent of the hospitals have remained at EMRAM stage 0 (a truly paper-based environment) for the past five years.

“There is much to celebrate about health IT during the last five years. Hospitals by and large have made great strides in advancing their EMR capabilities, yet there is a sizeable segment of the market that seems to be ‘stuck’ in their EMR progression and is at risk of being left behind by the rest of the herd (of U.S. hospitals). Efforts need to be taken now to address their needs and challenges to ensure these ‘at-risk’ hospitals survive for the next five years.”