Strong HIT adoption makes practices less likely to add new patients

The adoption of health IT makes primary care practices less likely to add new patients, according to a new survey published in the American Journal of Managed Care.

Led by Renuka Tipirneni, MD, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar at University of Michigan, the study evaluated the results of a cross-sectional survey of Michigan primary care physicians (PCPs) from the specialties of pediatrics, internal medicine and family medicine that took place between October and December 2012.

While 83 percent of the 739 respondents said they anticipated accepting new patients in the future, a closer look at the responses revealed that practices with the most health IT technologies were “significantly less likely” to anticipate having the capacity to accept new patients, according to the study.

Also, the study found that PCPs with higher health IT use were specifically less likely to accept patients with private insurance—not Medicare or Medicaid.

In analyzing the results, the authors noted that studies vary widely in the effect of health IT and EHRs on the efficiency of a practice. They were surprised to find greater willingness to accept new Medicaid and Medicare patients, and speculated that these patients may have provided a more predictable source of revenue. Also the general lack of willingness to accept new patients may have been tied to an overall strength of resources for the practices that had more health IT investment, the authors found.

Read the study.