Survey: 85% of providers in process of EHR implementation
EHR implementations are the top priority among healthcare IT professionals, with 85 percent indicating that they are either in the midst of an EHR project or plan to start one within the next 18 months, based on a survey from Embarcadero Technologies.
The initial criteria for meaningful use proposed last year were criticized by some healthcare organizations for being too strict; the final rule decreased the number of requirements. This increase in flexibility has many healthcare IT experts predicting that more healthcare providers will move to take advantage of the stimulus funds, the San Francisco-based application and database development tool vendor said.
Several of the 111 health IT professionals surveyed were on the sidelines before the meaningful use requirements were released, Embarcadero said. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed said they are already in the process of implementing an EHR system and 25 percent are planning to within the next six to 18 months.
When asked about their level of understanding, 74 percent said the existing information on meaningful use and certification was adequate and their technical implementation questions have been answered. Two-thirds of respondents agreed that their IT staff was ready to implement EHR systems that would comply with meaningful use and the same number (66 percent) also said they are planning to use database management tools to better understand the data and applications to implement EHRs and meaningful use.
When respondents were asked to identify their top three healthcare IT priorities, data management projects reigned supreme. EHR implementation received 61 percent of the mentions for first place, healthcare data warehouses came in second with 52 percent, followed by health information exchanges with 47 percent.
These projects require very high levels of data quality and data integration and impact the performance of the database systems supporting these types of applications, which helps explain why 46 percent of respondents indicated that database performance is their biggest data management challenge. Data integration came in a close second with 45 percent and data quality ranked third at 36 percent
Other insights from the survey include:
The Healthcare Data Management Survey was conducted throughout the months of March and April, according to Embarcadero.
The initial criteria for meaningful use proposed last year were criticized by some healthcare organizations for being too strict; the final rule decreased the number of requirements. This increase in flexibility has many healthcare IT experts predicting that more healthcare providers will move to take advantage of the stimulus funds, the San Francisco-based application and database development tool vendor said.
Several of the 111 health IT professionals surveyed were on the sidelines before the meaningful use requirements were released, Embarcadero said. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed said they are already in the process of implementing an EHR system and 25 percent are planning to within the next six to 18 months.
When asked about their level of understanding, 74 percent said the existing information on meaningful use and certification was adequate and their technical implementation questions have been answered. Two-thirds of respondents agreed that their IT staff was ready to implement EHR systems that would comply with meaningful use and the same number (66 percent) also said they are planning to use database management tools to better understand the data and applications to implement EHRs and meaningful use.
When respondents were asked to identify their top three healthcare IT priorities, data management projects reigned supreme. EHR implementation received 61 percent of the mentions for first place, healthcare data warehouses came in second with 52 percent, followed by health information exchanges with 47 percent.
These projects require very high levels of data quality and data integration and impact the performance of the database systems supporting these types of applications, which helps explain why 46 percent of respondents indicated that database performance is their biggest data management challenge. Data integration came in a close second with 45 percent and data quality ranked third at 36 percent
Other insights from the survey include:
- No single EHR system owns the market: 13.2 percent of respondents said they use Epic, 11.3 percent named Cerner and 7.5 percent said Siemens Healthcare. Other vendors such as NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, McKesson and Meditech received fewer mentions.
- Creating models to the HL7 standard and ICD-10 coding standards were also called out as important healthcare IT initiatives.
- Nearly half of respondents indicated interoperability with other systems and data integration were the top two major IT challenges of EHR system implementations.
The Healthcare Data Management Survey was conducted throughout the months of March and April, according to Embarcadero.