Skip to main content

Small Providers Benefit from EHRs, Survey Shows

By Greg Freeman, for HealthLeaders Media  
   March 22, 2011

Health information technology (IT) has benefited even small physician practices, according to a new report that contradicts other recent findings claiming that electronic health records (EHRs) and other health IT do not yield the benefits most providers expect.

Previous studies focused on the early years of electronic health records (EHR) when functions were not as mature, according to one of the authors of the survey article, David Blumenthal, MD, the national coordinator for health IT. He made the comments at a briefing sponsored by Health Affairs journal to announce its latest published studies.

Furthermore, the survey found evidence of emerging measurable benefits for small practices in addition to the larger health IT leaders, such as Kaiser Permanente and the Veterans Affairs Department, which have been the source of much experience data in the past, he said.

“Two salient aspects of this more recent synthesis is that it brings the literature up to date and extends it beyond the few large systems that were the source of most information on the record for health information technology, and looks at it in a much more representative set of provider settings,” Blumenthal said.

In the survey of 154 peer-reviewed articles from 2007 to 2010, the article found that 92% of the studies reached conclusions that indicated overall positive effects with the use of health IT, he said.

HealthTexas primary care providers spent $10,325 per physician and took 134.3 hours to put the EHR into practice, according to Neil Fleming, MD, vice president for health care research at Baylor Health Center System, who also spoke at the briefing. For a five-member practice, EHR implementation cost $7,857 and 130 hours.

Another study concluded that more than four in five office-based physicians could qualify for the meaningful use incentives, said one of its authors, Brian Bruen, PhD, lead research scientist and lecturer at George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services.

Blumenthal said that regional extension centers, which ONC established to assist primary providers with overcoming the technical hurdles to adopting EHRs, have signed up 50,000 providers nationwide. And almost 34,000 providers have registered with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to participate in the meaningful use incentive program to date.

CMS has already paid $34 million in incentives under the Medicaid program to 216 Medicaid providers in four states, Blumenthal said.

Tagged Under:


Get the latest on healthcare leadership in your inbox.