EHR Smokescreen

More Doctors Adopt Electronic Health Records

July 10 Kaiser Health News Capsule

"The nation's top Health IT official is lauding the nation's doctors for more widely adopting electronic health records in the past few years, but he and new studies say more work is needed to help the systems communicate with each other."

"CQ HealthBeat: Mostashari: It's Crunch Time For Health IT Adoption

Farzad Mostashari, the nation's top health IT official, said Tuesday that policymakers, doctors and hospitals should take a bit of a victory lap because of the widespread adoption of electronic medical records that has occurred in their industry since the 2009 economic stimulus law. But he warned that even though they are passing significant milestones, they have a long way to go (Reichard, 7/10)."

"Medpage Today: EHR Adoption Steady, But More Work Needed
Physicians are continuing to adopt electronic health records at a steady clip, but more work is needed to have those systems communicate with each other, according to two studies published Tuesday. In 2012, 72 percent of physicians had adopted some type of EHR system and 38.2 percent had capabilities required for a basic system, a review by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md., found. The number of basic EHR adopters was up from just over 25 percent in 2010, Chun-Ju Hsiao, PhD, and colleagues reported in a study that appeared online in Health Affairs (Pittman, 7/9)."

PS  I am not impressed. Too many unanswered questions.  What does “some type of EHR system “mean?  And what does “capabilities for a basic system” mean?   The fact that more work is “needed” to have the systems communicate with one another,  is also a dead giveaway that EHRs are still in the primitive stages of development.   How many of these systems meet the highly touted :meaningful use” critera?   Methinks there is more smoke than fire here.