ONC: 76% of hospitals using basic EHR

EHR adoption continues to increase with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT revealing that 76 percent of non-federal acute care hospitals in 2014 adopted at least a basic EHR system with clinician notes—a 27 percent increase from 2013.

“While fewer hospitals used basic EHR systems without clinician notes, significantly more adopted systems with clinician notes,” states the ONC brief based on data from the American Hospital Association IT supplement to AHA’s annual survey, Adoption of Electronic Health Record Systems among U.S. Non-Federal Acute Care Hospitals: 2008-2014. “Additionally, over a third of hospitals were using more advanced EHR functionality.”

Basic EHR adoption represents a minimum use of core functionality determined to be essential to an EHR system including clinician notes, according to ONC. The set of EHR functions must be implemented in at least one clinical unit to be considered basic EHR adoption, and comprehensive EHR adoption requires each function to be implemented in all clinical units.

The number of hospitals using systems with more advanced functionality has increased significantly. Hospital adoption of comprehensive EHR systems has increased to 34.4 percent of hospitals in 2014 compared to 25.7 percent in 2013.

ONC also reports that in 2014 97 percent of acute care hospitals possessed EHR technology certified to meet federal requirements. “These hospitals should have the technology needed to meet EHR Incentive Program objectives,” according to ONC. “These systems are also certified to be secure and able to work with other certified systems to share information.”

Read the ONC data brief.