A mere 1.5 percent of hospitals nationwide utilize any kind of comprehensive electronic health record system, according to research published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the survey of acute care hospitals found that only 1.5 percent have comprehensive (present in all clinical units) electronic records systems, although an additional 7.6 percent have a basic system (present in at least one clinical unit.) The survey did not include government-funded hospitals such as the Veterans Affairs hospital system, which has adopted comprehensive systems.
The federal stimulus package recently signed into law contains $19 billion for hospitals to adopt the technology and incentives for doctors to use it, with the hope that getting data online will improve patient care and save time and money.
The survey found larger hospitals, those located in urban areas, and teaching hospitals were more likely to have electronic records. Hospitals that did not have the systems cited capital requirements and maintenance costs as barriers to implementation.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recently announced it would start selling medical records software by this summer in its subsidiary Sam’s Club, jointly with Dell and eClinicalWorks. The system will retail for less than $25,000 for the first physician in a practice and $10,000 for each additional physician — about half the price of other systems on the market today, the retail giant estimates.
No comments:
Post a Comment