Small Physician Practices Not Using All Features of EHRs, Survey Finds

Few surveyed small and midsize physician practices use electronic health record system functions that are seen as essential components of the patient-centered medical home model of care, according to a Health Affairs study, InformationWeek reports.

For the study, researchers surveyed 1,344 small and medium-sized physician practices with one to 19 doctors.

Key Results

Survey respondents indicated that they use only about 20% of the care processes that are considered required for medical homes, which include:

• Care coordination;
• Electronic disease registries;
• Electronic prescribing; and
• Online communication with patients.

The survey found that smaller practices had implemented fewer health IT-related processes than larger groups. For example:

• About 17% of practices with one or two doctors had EHRs, compared with 26% of the entire survey population;
• Less than 19% of smaller practices had e-prescribing tools, compared with 28% of the entire group; and
• 6% of small practices had electronic disease registries, while 34% of practices with 13 to 19 doctors used them to communicate with patients who needed preventive or chronic care.

In addition, the majority of physicians communicated online with patients in less than 9% of the practices.

Steven Shortell — a co-author of the study, and dean of the School of Public Health and professor of health policy and management at the University of California-Berkeley — said that small practices may have fewer resources than larger groups, so it could take them longer to use the full range of EHR functions.

He added that a lack of online communication can reflect “the nature of the patient population” and whether they have Internet access and want to communicate online with physicians (Terry, InformationWeek, 7/8).

Source: iHealthBeat