Survey: Only 3% of pediatricians use EHRs with specialty-specific features

Pediatricians lag behind others in EHR adoption, according to a study published Nov. 19 by Pediatrics.

To determine the state of EHR adoption among pediatricians, researchers issued a survey to 1,620 randomly selected, office- or clinic-based  members of the American Academy of Pediatrics between February 2009 and July 2009. A total of 646 completed surveys were analyzed. Asked if they used an electronic medical record, 54 percent responded positively, and asked if they used an electronic health record, 41 percent responded positively.

The percentage of pediatricians using basic or fully functional EHR systems, as defined by the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, was lower with 25 percent of respondents reporting use of a basic EHR and 6 percent reporting use of a fully functioning EHR. Only 3 percent of respondents reported using a pediatric-supportive EHR, defined as including features for tracking of well-child visits, anthropometric support, tracking of immunizations, immunization forecasting and prescription support for weight-based dosing.

Barriers to adoption perceived by pediatricians were similar to commonly cited barriers. The top reported barriers to EHR adoption included cost (56 percent), finding an adequate EHR system (40 percent) and concerns with productivity loss during implementation (36 percent).

Based on these results and the results of previous national surveys, researchers determined that “pediatricians are one to two years behind the national average in terms of implementing fully functional EHR systems, and because pediatrics practices were included in these national surveys, our estimates of this lag may underestimated,” according to lead author Michael G. Leu, MD, MHS, of Seattle Children’s Hospital, and colleagues.

To address the gap, researchers proposed adjusting criteria for receiving Meaningful Use incentives, which are only available to providers caring for Medicare beneficiaries or a large pool of Medicaid beneficiaries, to encourage EHR vendors to develop pediatric-supportive features.

“It seems likely that EHR vendors will devote their resources to becoming certified for incentive programs and may not pursue additional child health certifications because it is a challenge to convince vendors to implement pediatric-supportive features when they have customers who do not appreciate the need for the features,” Leu et al concluded. “It will be important either to provide a rationale to vendors to prioritize these features, either by adding certification criteria or creating development toolkits to make it easier for vendors to integrate these features.”